A Post 2024 Election Ethics Spectacular!

/ Jack Marshall / 74 Comments

Abe was the real winner last night. I have been evoking his famous quote about nobody being able to “fool all the people all of the time” for the entire campaign, and his faith in the public, American values, democracy, the Constitution and the Founders’ vision was beautifully and inspiringly validated last night. It was particularly satisfying that the People were, ultimately not fooled despite the nefarious effort of the Axis media, pollsters and corrupt “experts” to deceive them. Creeping totalitarianism was kicked in the metaphorical nuts last night. Good.

And now, a brief musical interlude…

I will await with anticipation the flowers, candy, hams and notes from all of the doomsayers, cynics and faithless out there (you know who you are) who rolled their eyes at my insistence several months ago that the ugly mess Democrats had made during the past four years, the cover-up (and not a very good one) of Biden’s senility, the gaslighting, hypocrisy and lies by the party and its media allies, and most of all, the Soviet-style elevation to attempted anointed leadership of a DEI radical leftist without any genuine qualifications for President would end in a national election rebuke.

Meanwhile, anyone who is not Trump-Deranged should feel almost as much satisfaction from Trump’s revenge on the Axis (“the resistance,” Democrats, and the their toadying mainstream media), which was not only a resounding Electoral College victory (And we see one of the great virtues of the much-maligned EC: showing a mandate for a winning candidate who has won a clear majority of the states and the varying values they represent when the popular vote is close. This was a Democratic Party theme after the very close 1960 election, the first close election since the 19th Century. (And watch how high his Electoral College soars after California,New York, Illinois, and the rest of the states that signed onto The National Popular Vote Compact go! Just kidding. “National Vote Compact? What elephant?”) Will Republicans and Trump supporters, having taken the Senate back with brio and the White House and very likely to keep control of the House as well, take moment to give the sneering, condescending, hateful, fearmongering Left the momentary but emphatic, “So there! You got what you deserve. To hell with bygones: you’ve been trying to undo our country, and your President called us garbage and enemies of democracy.” The Duke understood…

.If the Democrats and their media are capable of a course correction and a return to fairness and sanity, they will take last night’s result as decisive evidence that they have been perverted, and that they need to do some serious introspection, read some history books, get some ethics training, and reform. A panelist on Fox News last night opined that the loss would be good for the Democrats, because it would be a slap in the face (or a punch in the mouth) to shock them into returning to the party’s traditional values, and not to continue the march to the elitist, racialist, DEI-besotted “we know what’s best, Little People!” single party distortion of the republic that the Biden Administration embraced. The final insult was that they tried to foist off a phony, undemocratically-selected, babbling hack as a trustworthy leader, counting on her ability to avoid direct answers, to deny her previous positions, hinting at diametrically opposed positions depending on her audience…

…and to rely on teleprompters while the Left called the other party and its candidate fascists and an existential threat to democracy.

That is what the Left, and certainly the now totally disgraced news media, should do, because regaining the trust they have squandered is paramount for the future of the nation. I’m sure they won’t. Oprah’s galpal Gayle King whined to the CBS morning audience today, “What about checks and balances?” See, when the other party holds the White House, the Senate , the House with a conservative SCOTUS, it’s undemocratic! This comes from a supporter of the party that would have tried to pack the Supreme Court if it had the kind of majorities the GOP will have over the next two years. Funny, I didn’t hear the news media or any Republicans make that fatuous protest when Barack Obama had a similarly supportive Congress…

No, they won’t snap out of it—they are too far gone. Harris could have signalled a commitment to restoring the traditions of respect and official deference to newly elected Presidents by graciously conceding last night when it was obvious to anyone not in denial that the jig was up. Like Hilary in 2016, she didn’t, couldn’t or wouldn’t, but at least Hillary had good reason to be stunned, and she was ahead in the popular vote. Because Harris couldn’t show any class, courage or contrition, I don’t fault Trump for not mentioning her name last night. No Presidential candidate of a major party has ever been so disgracefully savaged during a campaign.

I’ve run out of time, but I’ll be back. The riots haven’t started yet; Trump winning the popular vote might stifle them, but I doubt it. We should all celebrate Abe’s victory, but heed the warning of Samuel L. Jackson…

Last Election Related Post of the Day, I Promise…[Expanded]

/ Jack Marshall / 21 Comments

1. As I write this, the New York Times‘ model is predicting that Trump will win the popular vote and pegs his chances of winning the election at 90%. It’s a shame that I don’t trust anything the Times says.

2. The best column of the day came from David Harsanyi, a conservative pundit who is not a Trump fan. Best paragraph:

“The unhinged, hysterical meltdown of the Left over former President Donald Trump’s candidacy is unparalleled in modern history. Women who walk around cosplaying The Handmaid’s Tale are living in the wealthiest and freest place women have ever known. They will continue to do so, even if Trump finds his way back into the White House for four years. The very notion that “democracy” hinges on the unfettered availability of third-trimester abortions is a kind of corrosive delusion only partisanship can whip up in otherwise rational people. Then again, we already know if Trump wins, every innocuous tax cut will be treated like the Reichstag fire.”

Bingo.

3. The super fancy computer maps are distracting and no improvement over the old fashioned tote boards of the past; in fact, they are much worse. Over at Fox News, poor Bill Hemmer is constantly saying, “Sorry, sorry…there we go…oops, wrong screen…”

4. MSNBC’s propagandists are furious and in a foul mood, as well as lying their fool heads off, as usual. Joy Reid announced that black men were not supporting Trump any more than in 2020—that’s untrue. Lawrence O’Donnell went on a rant about how the Republicans get “to play by different rules than Democrats,” which qualifies as gaslighting. They were joined by smirking Rachel Maddow in gratuitous Trump-bashing: if you can’t beat him, smear him.

I hope I can stay awake to watch the meltdown if and when Trump is declared the winner.

5. It’s ugly and stupid over on Facebook, as I have had to wrestle my fingers to the floor to stop myself from picking off the ridiculous, poorly reasoned, ignorant claims and rationalizations from people who once were rational even as you and I until their brains were eaten by Trump Derangement.

6. Ann Seltzer, whose polling stunned everyone by showing Harris winning Iowa, a GOP stronghold, needs to go into another field. Trump is winning the state by 14 pts. How incompetent. How embarrassing.

7. Fox News keeps saying that if Trump wins, it will be the greatest comeback in American political history. This is just wrong. Richard Nixon will always have that distinction. He lost the Presidential election in 1960, then lost in an upset when he ran for governor of California in 1962. Everyone assumed he had signed his political obituary when he gave a bitter, self-pitying concession speech and appeared to announce that he was quitting politics. In 1964, he wasn’t a factor in the Presidential race at all, and was just practicing law in New York. Four years later, Nixon was President.

8.[Added, 1:17 am] I can’t let this pass. Juan Williams just got on Fox News and attributed Trump’s increasingly likely victory (the Times now has the likelihood at 95%) to racism and sexism. Over at MSNBC, the horrible Joy Reid actually said that Harris had run a “perfect” campaign, which is so absurd she should have been yanked off the set with a hook. This tells me that the programmed narrative if Harris loses is that it was only bigotry that defeated her, and not the fact that she was a weak and unappealing candidate who ran a terrible campaign.

Honoring a Friend and Mentor By Following His Example

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

I haven’t had time to finish my post honoring my friend, boss, advisor and mentor Tom Donohue, the long-time president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce whose funeral service I attended last week. I did, however, have an opportunity to follow his example today. Tom would have approved.

One of Tom’s life rules was “If you can help someone, young or old, in their career, do it.” He explained his dedication to this practice by saying, simply, “It’s the right thing to do. If you do it for others, they will do it for someone else when they are in a position to help. It makes society better. It maks life better.” And indeed, when I was in a protracted job search after leaving the Chamber, Tom made calls for me, and set up some networking meetings. (One was with Mitch McConnell’s wife, Elaine Chao, who treated me like poop on her shoe. But that’s another story…)

Today, in a busy, troubled day, I reluctantly listened to a sales pitch from a Verizon representative who knocked on my door offering special high-speed internet deals. He was a young African American man, in his twenties, and I was impressed with his poise and demeanor. I spend an hour talking with him—yes, I signed up to finally dump Comcast—and we learned a lot about each other. He told me he was starting up his own business while working for Verizon, and confessed to being a little frightened of the risk and the looming challenges of management. I shared some favorite stories about the national culture of risk taking and my own experiences with success and failure.

After our meeting I kept thinking about the kid, and for some reason Tom’s words came back to me while I was walking Spuds. Upon returning home, I called the young man; he had left his contact information. I told him that he had given me a good deal, and I wanted to offer him a deal in return: as an ethicist, I was available to him for advice and guidance at any point in his business adventures or in life. He just had to call.

He was exuberantly thankful, and I said, “Now make sure you call me before you make a mistake, if you can. But I’ll be helpful after one too. I’m serious about this.”

Who knows if he’ll really seek my advice? But at least he knows he has the resource.

And for me, it was the right thing to do.

Thanks Tom. Again.

Oh Look! Now the LEFT Is Complaining About Lawyers Being Reluctant To Represent Unpopular Clients!

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

In 2020, as discussed here, The NeverTrump Lincoln Project joined the anti-Trump Democrats in targeting law firms hired by the Trump campaign to challenge alleged irregularities in the election. Election law specialists Porter, Wright, Morris & Arthur and its lawyers were threatened with professional ruin and financial disaster, as they were told that daring to support the President of the United States constitutes a “dangerous attack on our democracy.” The firm, showing a dearth of legal ethics and integrity, withdrew, whining that the assault on its reputation created a conflict of interest, was disrupting the firm, and had prompted at least one lawyer’s resignation. Other firms dropped the campaign as a client, and the reason was fear—of losing clients, of being shunned in the legal community, of losing money. Mostly the latter.

How times had changed. When Bush Department of Defense Deputy Secretary Cully Stimson, a lawyer, gave a radio interview in which he condemned attorneys from large law firms who were representing Guantanamo Bay detainees pro bono and suggested that corporations avoid employing those firms because they were aiding the nation’s enemies, the legal profession reacted with indignation and horror. Karen J. Mathis, then the president of the American Bar Association, said, “Lawyers represent people in criminal cases to fulfill a core American value: the treatment of all people equally before the law. To impugn those who are doing this critical work — and doing it on a volunteer basis — is deeply offensive to members of the legal profession, and we hope to all Americans.” Prof. Stephen Gillers, the media’s favorite legal ethicist thanks to his penchant for being hard on conservatives and lenient on liberals, wrote, “This is prejudicial to the administration of justice. It’s possible that lawyers willing to undertake what has been long viewed as an admirable chore will decline to do so for fear of antagonizing important clients.” Christopher Moore, a lawyer at the New York firm Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen & Hamilton continued the profession’s defense of core lawyer ethics, telling the New York Times, “We believe in the concept of justice and that every person is entitled to counsel.”

Continue reading →

Still More Election Day Ethics Musings…

/ Jack Marshall / 19 Comments

I’m posting that picture because it made me laugh out loud when I first saw it yesterday, has made be laugh several times just thinking about it, and still makes me laugh. I’m considering blowing it up and having it framed. I’m depressed and exhausted, I’m alone in a big house missing my wife, I have a million boring, annoying things to do and no plausible reason not to do them, and whoever took this photo (and I don’t care if it’s fa; it worked) is an ethics hero in my book.

Meanwhile:

1. Confronting my biases, 2024 election edition: I’m really going to have to work at not losing respect for a lot of friends and relatives who have written and said some of the dumbest, most ignorant things over the pat several months. I think I really will treat them asif they have been suffering from some obtrusive malady, like Tourettes, making them scream out obscenities, or uncontrollable flatulence. Of course, this will depend on whether they can calm the hell down…

2. At the risk of summoning “A Friend” from Spam Hell, kind of like inadvertently using a Ouija board to loose and evil spirit on the world, I must note lawyer-blogger John Hinderaker’s excellent takedown of the email the New York Times sent its subscribers, including me (though I don’t know how much longer I can stand it). The thing really is astounding in its hypocrisy and lack of self awareness, and I salute John for saving me the time to defenestrate it. What struck me was how every single item in the Times propaganda piece was identical to the arguments of my Trump Deranged relative who doesn’t read the times. Who is spreading these talking points? From whence specifically do they emanate? The one that particularly interested me was the last item: “[Trump] also vows to avoid the pattern of his first term by appointing loyal aides who will carry out his wishes.”

How dare he! Hinderaker writes, “We certainly hope so! That is what a president is supposed to do, and what Kamala Harris surely would do, with the help of whoever it is that has been running the Biden administration and now would run hers.”

Continue reading →

The Most Deranged Anti-Trump Lie of All, And Other Election Day Morning Ethics Musings…

/ Jack Marshall / 19 Comments

I realized, as I woke up with a bang this morning earlier than I wanted to, that I am far more emotionally, intellectually and patriotically, never mind ethically, invested in the Presidential election result in 2024 than in any previous election.

The reasons, I hope, have been made reasonably clear here, not just over the course of the campaign, but over the past eight years, ever since the 2016 Post Election Ethics Train Wreck chugged out of the metaphorical station. I also am, alternately, furious and amused by the ridiculous reality that the candidate I feel so strongly has to win today for the good of the nation is probably the worst Presidential candidate one of the two major parties has ever offered to the American public on Election Day, at least since the Civil War, with the exception of Woodrow Wilson, Trump himself and Hillary in 2016, and Joe Biden in 2020. I also am more anxious about what the Post 2024 Election Ethics Train Wreck will bring.

I am certain that if Trump wins, the Left will riot, and as the rioting will occur during a dead-in-the-water Democratic Administration, it will not be controlled and may even be encouraged. Make no mistake, this will be 100% the fault of the Axis of Unethical Conduct and the Harris campaign. They have used fear and hate as primary weapons against Donald Trump when they weren’t trying to impeach him or lock him up, and raised the intensity of this unethical—I could say “evil”—strategy to previously unimaginable levels when they realized that they had nothing positive—well, unless you consider aborting more babies positive—to justify another Democratic Presidency.

The party and its unethical news media useful idiots deserve to be punished, though I am not sure how. Both may have damaged themselves sufficiently to qualify as condign justice, but I doubt it. They have divided, wounded, scarred and imperiled the United States of America. There has to be accountability; there have to be consequences.

The first penalty needs to be a defeat today.

Other related ethics observations:

Continue reading →

“The Untrustworthy 20,” the Worst of the Worst On the Ballots in 2024, Part 2: Naming Names

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

Ugh.

I was afraid of this: when I went over the various files to make the final cut, I had to leave out so many genuine miscreants whose presence as elected officials is a blight on America the Beautiful. Because I want to have the list evenly divided between Republicans and Democrats, I couldn’t even find space for all the members of “The Squad.” Or Maxine Waters.

Back when I was doing the “Dirty Dozen,” the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, aka CREW, was a helpful resource because the group used to maintain its own list of corrupt officials. Oh, the list was heavily weighted toward Republicans, naturally, because while CREW claimed to be non-partisan, it clearly wasn’t. Eventually its ideological bias became undeniable, and now about half of its “investigations” involve Donald Trump.

Since the list is long, I won’t belabor the reasons for each honoree. In most cases, I shouldn’t have to. And, as in the past, most of these unethical candidates will win.

1. Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky). He’s 82, making the fact that he’s running at all unethical. Then there is his destructive and wildly unethical—but legal!—refusal to allow Barack Obama’s nominee for the Supreme Court, Merrick Garland, even come to a vote.

2. Nancy Pelosi (D-S.F.). Like McConnell, Pelosi is an ethics dunce just for running (she’s 84). Her Ethics Alarms dossier is thick and damning, and her despicable open disrespect for President Trump during his final State of the Union address was a low point in American political history. She is a lifetime Ethics Villain.

Continue reading →

Unethical Closing Campaign Pitch of the Week: Kamala Harris

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

1. Wow. Harris has the epic gall to say that her opposition offers a “country of chaos, fear and hate” after her party has run a campaign stretching back years claiming that Donald Trump and his supporters threaten our continued existence as a free country, that his secret goal is to lock up his political opponents, ban abortion, and install himself as a dictator. The President she has served under claiming she is in entirely in sync with his views and policies just called half the nation “garbage”—I may be a bit too sensitive, but I think that’s hateful. For a the past 60 days, Harris’s campaign’s main message is that Donald Trump is Adolf Hitler. Scary! The Democrats have not only made this country one of fear and hate, they have done so deliberately to maintain their power.

2. Chaos? Has there been an administration since the Civil War that wallowed in more chaos than the Biden-Harris term mercifully concuding? Two bloody wars, a disastrous abandonment of Afghanistan, chaos at the border, chaos on campuses, soaring crime in the cities, two assassination attempts on the Republican Presidential candidate, and worst of all, the unsettling and dangerous spectacle of a mentally disabled POTUS , manipulated by an unaccountable group of faceless bureaucrats attempting to hide his condition from the public and, when that became impossible, his party engineering a Soviet-style ouster, bypassing the established process of choosing a nominee.

Continue reading →

“The Untrustworthy 20,” the Worst of the Worst On the Ballots in 2024, Part I: Introduction

/ Jack Marshall / Leave a comment

When I was writing the predecessor to Ethics Alarms, The ethics Scoreboard, I would issue “The Dirty Dozen,” a compendium of the most unethical candidates for elected office every two years. For the first election cycle in Ethics Alarms’ history, I posted on “The Untrustworthy Twenty” and thereafter, I don’t remember why, discontinued the tradition. Sloth? Hopelessness? I just forgot?

After  George Santos (above) slimed his way into Congress in 2022 after lying about virtually everything, however, I resolved to  resuscitate the project as depressing as it might be. In that old post (2010) I began,

“Trust is the connective tissue that holds societies together: it can be strengthened by demonstrations of ethical values like integrity, loyalty, honesty, civility, responsibility, competence, and courage, and weakened by proof of unethical traits like fecklessness, dishonesty, lack of independent judgment, selfishness, lack of diligence, greed and cowardice. For decades, the American public’s trust in its elected representatives and governmental institutions—and other critical institutions like the news media and the legal system—has been in steep decline. This is not because of some inexplicable public fad or the poisoning of public perceptions by an unholy alliance of the pop culture and Fox news. The decline in trust has occurred because a significant proportion of America’s elected leaders have not been trustworthy, and the reason this has been true is that American voters have thus far refused to make proof of ethical values their main priority in electing them. Because politicians know this, they feel empowered to engage in corruption, self-enrichment and deception in the confidence that partisan supporters will vote for them anyway, as long as they mouth the same policy positions and deliver their quota of pork, earmarks, and government contracts. This, of course, does not benefit of  country in the long run, but weakens it. It also creates an increasingly arrogant and power-obsessed political class to which ethical values are like Halloween costumes, donned at regular intervals to disguise who they really are. The core principles of the democratic process do not matter to many of these people, and they don’t see why they should matter.”

Isn’t itreassuring to know that things haven’t changed in 14 years? In fact, they have: they are much worse. I could easily compile an unethical 50, or 100. The two most untrustworthy major party candidates for President of the United States ever to face off in a Presidential election are on the ballot tomorrow, to succeed a a strong competitor for Worst President Ever who has made such a mess of the office and our traditional Presidential election process that the political system may never recover. In that 2010 post, I wrote,

“Public trust cannot keep declining indefinitely, you know. Eventually, a government that cannot be trusted will collapse. Just as addressing America’s fiscal crisis will take hard measures and sacrifice, addressing its equally dangerous crisis in trust requires sacrifice too. It will require voters to establish the principle that being “effective,” experienced or having the “right” policy positions will not be enough to justify electing or re-electing individuals who are demonstrably trustworthy. Voters must establish  untrustworthiness as absolutely disqualifying a candidate for election to public office. Any ethical, honest candidate with integrity must be seen as per se preferable to a corrupt, dishonest or unethical candidate, regardless of past achievements or policy views.”

I still believe that, despite being forced to vote for an untrustworthy candidate in this election because a cruel or sadistic god has chosen to make him the only available option to combat an organized and relentless effort to unmake the United States as it was envisioned by its Founders.

In that post, I offered a list of factors that do not justify determining that a candidate is necessarily untrustworthy: Continue reading →

Dear Patty LuPone: Please, PLEASE Tell Kecia Lewis “Oh, Bite Me!”

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

Does this outrageous story of contrived race-baiting on Broadway relate to tomorrow’s election? Sure it does. I’ll explain after you finish gagging following the facts of the incident.

Kecia Lewis  is a talented black Broadway actress. She won a Tony for her performance in “Hell’s Kitchen,” a 2024 jukebox musical (that means the show has no original music and uses previous pop hits to try to tell a story). The show, about the life and career of Alicia Keys, shares a wall with another Broadway theater and creates a problem that actors, directors and producers have complained about for decades: the amplified sound in “Hell’s Kitchen” can be heard by the audience of the show next door. (You know when you’re in a multi-screen “cineplex” watching an intimate drama and the movie showing in the next theater is “Pearl Harbor”? It’s like that.)

The show next door to “Hell’s Kitchen” is “The Roommate,” a quiet, two-actor drama starring Mia Farrow and Broadway legend Patti LuPone of “Evita” fame. LuPone sent a polite note to the “Hell’s Kitchen” producers asking them to turn down the volume at two points in the sound design that were loud enough to interfere with her show. They did. LuPone, in gratitude, sent a thank-you note to the producers and flowers to the stage management and sound staff.

In a normal world, that would be the end of it. I’m certain this exact scenario has played out many times over the years as simple professional courtesy and consideration. Ethics!

But no. Kecia Lewis decided to be offended. She posted a video on Instagram reprimanding LuPone for engaging in “microagressions.” She complained,  

 “After our sound design was adjusted, [you] sent flowers to our sound and stage management team thanking them”… “I want to explain what a microaggression is – These are subtle, unintentional comments or actions that convey stereotypes, biases or negative assumptions about someone based on their race. Microaggressions can seem harmless or minor, but can accumulate and cause significant stress or discomfort for the recipient. Examples include calling a Black show loud in a way that dismisses it. In our industry, language holds power and shapes perception, often in ways that we may not immediately realize. Referring to a predominantly Black Broadway show as loud can unintentionally reinforce harmful stereotypes, and it also feels dismissive of the artistry and the voices that are being celebrated on stage. Comments like these can be seen as racial microaggressions, which have a real impact on both artists and audiences. While gestures like sending thank you flowers may appear courteous, it was dismissive and out of touch, especially following a formal complaint that you made that resulted in the changes that impacted our entire production, primarily the people who have to go out on stage and perform.” 

Yes, she really says that. She does. I’m not making it up! This insufferable actress not only felt that was a reasonable response to a request, a thank-you, and flowers, but decided to issue her complaint publicly rather than having the guts to tell LuPone that she’s a racist to her face.

Continue reading →