Incompetent Elected Official Of The Month (And A Disgrace To Congress Too): Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) [Updated]

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

This amazing story—one more step down into the muck by Congress—dawned earlier today. I was going to wait until the morning to post about it, but I didn’t sleep well last might, and I can’t take another might of ethics nightmares.

As House Democrat were trying to delay a vote on a stopgap spending bill yesterday despite a looming government shutdown, a fire alarm sounded in the Cannon House Office Building, forcing an evacuation. It was a false alarm, and the reason it sounded was that Representative Jamaal Bowman, Democrat of New York, pulled it. Great idea! Bowman’s chief of staff, Sarah Iddrissu, eventually confirmed in a statement on Twitter/X, that Bowman, who represents the north Bronx and parts of Westchester County, had done the deed; she didn’t have much choice, since he was caught on a security camera..

“Congressman Bowman did not realize he would trigger a building alarm as he was rushing to make an urgent vote,” Ms. Iddrissu wrote. “The Congressman regrets any confusion.” Showing an excess of chutzpa or a deficit in respect for the public, Bowman was claiming, at last report, to have set off the fire alarm by accident. How do you do that? That’s Bowman caught in the act above. I guess a sound track would receal taht he said, “OOPS!” when he pulled down the switch.

Added 1, from Axios: “Bowman later told reporters he “thought the alarm would open the door” because “the door that’s usually open wasn’t open.” My wife’s reaction: “That’s an insult to everyone. He thinks we’re all stupid.”

Added 2: Sources are now telling reporters that Bowman ripped down the signs at the door he now claims he thought would open by pulling the fire alarm. Those signs made it rather clear how to leave through them. They have been put back up: here’s the photo of the exit:

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More On The Unethical “Stand Up For Science” Mug (I Can’t Help It…I’m “Triggered”)

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

The asinine “Stand Up For Science” mug I wrote about earlier today still rankles, and I just realized that a video that surfaced this month is relevant to it. I had seen a recently released TEDTalk given in 2013 by S. Matthew Liao. He is the Director of the Center for Bioethics and Affiliated Professor in the Department of Philosophy at New York University, and has previously been on the faculty of Oxford, Johns Hopkins, Georgetown, and Princeton. He’s also the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Moral Philosophy. Several conservative commentators had freaked out over the video; naturally, the mainstream media buried it. They did that because it represents the outer limits of a climate change panic whackadoodle, and this guy is unquestionably not just a SCIENTIST of the sort that the mug-makers want us to fall down and worship as the all-knowing, all-seeing societal architects they are, but also an ethicist as well. I considered it as a post topic but decided against using it, because, well, it seemed too silly to have to point out how irresponsible Liao is.

Then came..the mug.

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Addendum To The Senate Dress Code Fiasco: Althouse’s Ethically-Muddled Analysis

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

Well, I’ve been nice to Ann lately, but as she does sometimes, she botched her analysis of this story badly, and attention should be paid. I’ll have Ann’s words in italics, and my comments without them…

Ann wrote, beginning with the NPR quote, “The Senate’s move to relax its unofficial dress code has led to a surprising development: an official dress code,”

“It’s not the way it always goes, but it shows the risk of seeking a new rule. You may end up with a reinforcement of the old rule. More precisely, it shows the risk of ending the enforcement of an informal practice. It led to the formalization of the old practice into an official rule.”

Why is that a “risk”? The risk of ending the enforcement of an old rule is that the consequences the old rule was designed to prevent occur. There were reasons for the old rule, and as Herman Kahn once told me, people have a tendency to take traditions and standards for granted after a while, forget why they existed, and have to learn, often painfully, all over again. That’s what happened here. As the Ethics Alarms motto goes, “When ethics fails, the law steps in.” Fetterman was unethical, and Schumer, rather than being a responsible leader and telling him to shape up, eliminated the ethical standard he was breaching instead.

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Ethics Dunce: Ex-Pitching Star And Big Mouth Curt Schilling

/ Jack Marshall / 24 Comments

It’s been more than a month since the last baseball-related post. I fear it’s because the whole topic has left a bad taste in my mouth since the Red Sox essentially choked away what should have been a fun season right about the time I wrote the last one, which was childish of me. But I can’t ignore this ugly ethics story.

Curt Schilling, the former Orioles/Houston/Phillies/Diamondbacks and Red Sox starting pitcher justly credited as being the hero of Boston’s “Curse of the Bambino”-banishing World Series championship in 2004, revealed on a podcast last week that former Red Sox team mate Tim Wakefield is being treated for “brain cancer” and that Wakefield’s wife is being treated for cancer as well. This led to an outpouring of support for Wakefield, the knuckleball specialist who is as beloved by Red Sox Nation for his community work as much as for his always entertaining pitching as the last of the great knuckleballers. However, the Wakefields hadn’t authorized anyone to reveal their medical issues. The Red Sox felt compelled to issue a statement:

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The ‘Great Stupid’ Woke Mug That’s Even Worse Than The ‘Great Stupid’ Woke Lawn Signs

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

This embarrassing thing has over 5,000 “likes” on Facebook, including many from friends of mine who I will henceforth have a hard time looking in the eye.

The mug, which is available free of charge “for a limited time only,” annoys me more than the “In this house we believe” signs with their fatuous virtue-signaling, generalizations (“Love is Love”) and rationalizations (“No Human Being Is Illegal”). because the game it plays is more sinister and confusing to the intellectually handicapped. It is a political propaganda device that deliberately uses false equivalencies in order to ridicule and denigrate legitimate dissent from current progressive cant.

The smug mug’s three statements of the obvious (“The Earth is not flat,” “Chemtrails aren’t a thing” and “We’ve been to the moon”) contradict fringe wacko conspiracy theories that don’t require debunking, since only a tiny and insignificant percentage of the public believes in them or ever has, and almost all of that group breathe through their mouths. However, mixed in among those topics as if they are in the same category are reductive generalizations about two public policy issues involving serious and valid controversies. That’s dirty pool, and worse, the statements aspire to end debates that they don’t even fairly reference.

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I’m Curious About How Progressives In The Media And Democratic Party Will Try To Duck Responsibility For This Phenomenon. Are You?

/ Jack Marshall / 36 Comments

News item: As of this morning, at least 61 people had been arrested in connection to widespread looting over two days in Philadelphia. The looting began Tuesday night with at least 30 people arrested for crimes including burglary, theft and participating in rioting. Those arrested included Dayjia Blackwell, aka. “Meatball,” a Philadelphia social media influencer who helped organize and then live-treamed the looting barrage. The viral lawlessness continued for two more days, with shoe stores, pharmacies, beauty parlors and liquor stores being attacked, among other businesses. At least 25 people were arrested for the looting that took place the nextt evening, Wednesday.. Thursday night businesses across the city hired private security. Police officers were stationed outside several establishments, including drug stores and liquor stores. Claudia Silmeas, the owner of the beauty supply shop that was targeted, told reporters, in tears, “I just want them to stop. Stop. Just stop. We are innocent of all of this. I just want them to stop.”

Someone ask Claudia if she voted for a city government that has emphasized the de-criminalization of non-violent crimes and has enabled hostility to law enforcement to flourish in the wake of the demonizing of police following the Black Lives Matter pathogen. If the answer is yes, she is assuredly not innocent.

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Comment Of The Day: “Ethics Quiz: The National Cathedral’s New Windows”

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

A lovely and thoughtful Comment of the Day by Sarah B. on the post, “Ethics Quiz: The National Cathedral’s New Windows”:

***

I look at these windows and I am disappointed. Our culture has moved away from what should be presented everywhere: the true, good, and beautiful. Let us put these windows to the test.

Are these windows depicting what is true? Yes, things like this have happened. No one can argue on this. Are they depicting what is good? This is harder. The windows have the intent of being understood in several ways, some of them, NOT good. Finally beautiful. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, that is true, but no one seriously thinks that the rose windows in Notre Dame are ugly. I certainly do no see much beauty in these windows. The signs are jarring and take up most of the space on the windows. The emphasis, therefore, is on signs and messages, not on beautiful pictures.

In addition, I look at this from the Catholic standpoint of stained glass typically showing multiple scenes of import or people to be admired. From that standpoint, I can come up with many better pictures for an attempt at a mostly apolitical set of windows. If one wants to tell the history of slavery even, I have some great ideas. I think our history has more important matters than that, but I’ll give the slavery a shot first. Of course, all of these will have to be simplified for the material of stained glass, but we have had Jesus feeding the multitudes on stained glass for centuries, not to mention all the other Bible stories. A true student of stained glass can simplify anything and do so meaningfully.

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Ethics Quiz: Is This An Ethical Teacher Training Film? Just Kidding: Of Course It Isn’t…

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

Imagine a culture that could permit something this biased, divisive, reductive and vile to get funded, green-lighted, produced and used.

Never mind: you don’t need to imagine it. That culture’s here.

Now what?

End Of September Ethics Songs, Part 2

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

As in Part I, here are some September ethics tales in danger of ending up on the metaphorical cutting room floor. (I’m a Jimmy Durante fan, and the Kurt Weill classic has been recorded by many singers, from Perry Como to Willie Nelson, but this is the version of “September Song” that is most famous…)

1. So naturally, some Democrats want her to run for President. According to the Daily Mail, Michelle Obama was paid $741,000 to give a one hour speech in Germany. Issues & Insights points out that “by the time she was six minutes into her speech, she’d made more money than 50% of households in the United States make in a year.” Needless to say, there is nothing Michelle Obama has to say that is that valuable. I&I asks, “What is the difference between what Sen. Bob Menendez is charged with, what President Joe Biden is being investigated for, and the speech Michelle Obama gave in Germany on Monday?” It’s answer: “Only the dollar amounts.” It adds, “The one and only reason she commanded that price is because of the current buzz that she might run for president next year, given that Biden seems unlikely to last until November 2024, let alone January 2029. The organizers of the event were buying political influence, not insights.” I think that’s a likely explanation: recall how the lucrative donations to the shady Clinton Foundation dried up as soon as it became clear that Hillary would not become President. And yet the same people, from the same party that shrugs off the crypto-bribery enriching the Clintons, Bidens and Obamas as innocent fees for services rendered, kept up the complaint that Donald Trump having foreign officials stay at one of his hotels was an impeachable offense under the dead-letter Emoluments Clause in the Constitution.

2. When “trailblazers” choke: Leilani Armenta became the first women to appear in a “Historic Black Colleges and Universities” football game. A soccer player, she was recruited to handle the kick-off (and maybe a field goal or extra point or two!) for Jackson State. ESPN promoted it as something they “loved to see“—and she began the game with a 20 yard bloop that any non-kicker on the field could have surpassed. Diversity! Equity! Inclusion! No, she was not permitted to try an extra point of field goal after that. Apparently ESPN loves to see someone given a chance to strike a blow for gender equality fall flat on her face. Megan Rapinoe was unavailable for comment.

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Friday Open Forum! Yum!

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

This week’s forum will be sandwiched between Parts 1&2 of a September clean-up. So many delicious ethics stories and issues have floated or crawled by recently—and the volume seems to be increasing—that I’m desperately trying to reduce the backload. And the hits just keep on coming: I woke up to an alert that Senator Feinstein had died, an ethics story in itself. Evoking memories of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s most selfish and irresponsible conduct as President, Feinstein was willing to wither and die in office rather than give up her power and position when it was clear that the Reaper was knocking.

Last night, ethics actually kept me awake: the last post was typed out around 5 am. I’m hoping the contributions to the Forum will let me take an early nap.