The Ethics Zugzwang Of Trump vs. The Democrats, Part 2: How Can The Same Democratic Party Strategy Be Designed To Help Trump And Hurt Him At The Same Time?

/ Jack Marshall / 30 Comments

This is not the Part 2 of the three part series I initially planned: I have a laborious post on the way discussing various esteemed lawyers’ analyses of the legitimacy or lack of same in the most recent Trump indictments. But Ann Althouse yesterday flagged a New York Times article headlined “How Trump Benefits From an Indictment Effect/In polling, fund-raising and conservative media, the former president has turned criminal charges into political assets” and commented, “Good. I’m glad this is backfiring. I have never been a Trump supporter, but I hate the criminalization of politics.”

As do I, and as commenters here have made clear, many believe that the best way to punish the Democrats for their unprecedented legal pursuit of the ex-President (which began when he was President-elect in 2016) is to, once again, elect the object of their undemocratic, indeed Soviet-style, assault on democracy as a protest and demonstration of contempt.

That may be appetizing, but at what price? More than once, most recently here, I have analogized the shock election of Trump in 2016 to the climax of “Animal House”:

Electing Trump certainly seemed stupid. Yet it served a purpose, indeed several purposes, just like the “stupid and futile gesture” that is the climax and operatic finale of “Animal House,” when the abused members of Delta House turn Faber College’s homecoming parade into a violent riot…

Voting for Trump was an “Up yours!” to the elites, the sanctimonious media, the corrupt Clintons, the hollow Obamas, and obviously corrupt Democrats like Pelosi and Harry Reid, machine Republicans like Mitch McConnell, and pompous think-tank conservatives like Bill Kristol.

As I wrote on the same theme right after the election,

“Americans got tired of being pushed around, lectured, and being told that traditional cultural values made them racists and xenophobes. They decided to say “Screw that!” by electing a protest candidate whose sole function was to be a human thumb in the eye, because he was so disgusting to the people who had pretended to be their betters. Don’t you understand? It’s idiotic, but the message isn’t. It’s “Animal House”! and “Animal House” is as American as Doolittle’s Raid….In Germany, The Big Cheese says jump and the Germans say “How high?” In the US, the response is “Fuck you!” Obama never understood that…. I love that about America. And much as I hate the idea of an idiot being President, I do love the message and who it was sent to. America still has spunk.

But you can’t keep justifying repeats of the same stupid and futile gesture. Eventually, you have to get serious. (The Capitol riot was a more literal emulation of Delta House’s protest, but even more stupid and futile.) That so many people are actually considering a sequel is evidence of just how difficult it is to determine what the “right thing to do” is when ethics zugzwang looms. It can’t be the right thing to let the strategy adopted by the “resistance”/Democratic Party/mainstream media alliance (aka. “The Axis of Unethical Conduct,” or AUC) in the 2016 Post-Election Ethics Train Wreck succeed, but if the cure—re-electing Trump, another thumb in the eye— isn’t worse than the disease, it’s still reckless, risky and irresponsible.

So now what? The Ethics zugzwang theme is magnified by the competing theories about what the Democrats hope to accomplish by prosecuting Trump for anything they can think of. Is it as simple as trying to use the justice system to remove him from the field? Is the AUC really that stupid and naive? Of course this strategy enhances Trump’s status with those inclined to support him, just as the bogus impeachments did. Nah, it must be that the Left is playing three-dimensional chess…you know, like the deranged Custer of “Little Big Man…

I really don’t know what’s going on, and the many commenters on Ann’s post don’t agree either. For example….

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Comment Of The Day: “Painkiller”

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

Most of the comments on EA posts come from a solid base of experience and knowledge, but it is especially welcome when a commenter enlightens us on a subject he or she really knows well. Thus Tom P.’s observations on the pharmaceutical industry in light of the EA post on the Perdue Pharma/Sackler/ OxyContin horror as dramatized in “Painkiller” is a special pleasure. Here it is, a Comment of the Day:

***

I apologize for the length of this post, but the topic is complicated and does not lend itself to sound bites. What follows is my experience and opinions based on working in the pharmaceutical industry and extensive reading on my part.

Full disclosure: I am a retired pharmaceutical company executive. During my career, I worked for various cosmetic and pharmaceutical companies. I held positions in R&D, manufacturing, quality control, and supply chain management. For most of my career, I was responsible for a major Pharma manufacturer’s anticancer and biologics global supply chains. As a point of reference, I have not seen “Dopesick” or “Painkiller”. I am familiar, however, with the travesty the Sacklers perpetrated on the sick and society. The best summary of their unethical and probably criminal behavior I have read is in an LA Times May 5, 2016, article: https://www.latimes.com/projects/oxycontin-part1/

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“Painkiller”

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

“Painkiller,” the new Netflix series about the origins of the opioid crisis largely created by the despicable machinations of the Sackler family and Perdue Pharma, could not be better timed. Just three days ago there was another development in the fall of the Sacklers, as the U.S. Supreme Court temporarily blocked the implementation of the 2021 $6 billion deal in federal bankruptcy court that would have blocked future opioid lawsuits against family members, who added to their vast fortune by creating and peddling OxyContin to complicit doctors and unsuspecting members of the public.

OxyContin was introduced in 1995 as Purdue Pharma’s breakthrough drug for chronic pain. The company employed an unethical marketing strategy that family scion Arthur Sackler had pioneered decades earlier, lobbying doctors to prescribe the drug and increase its dosage by dangling gifts, free trips to “pain-management seminars,”( aka all-expenses-paid vacations), paid speaking engagements, and ego-stroking visits from comely sales reps with cheerleading credentials.

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You Can Make Your Own Decision, But I Won’t Be Patronizing Best Buy From Now On…

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

A whistleblower revealed the above screen shot of an internal Best Buy company memo regarding “management leadership academy programs” with the O’Keefe Media Group. The programs are a partnership between Best Buy and global management consultant McKinsey & Company, and, as you can see in the third bullet point under “Candidates must meet the requirements below,” white employees need not apply.

That’s illegal and racially discriminatory, or course, But to be fair, this is “good racism” in Woke World.

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Apparently Obama Is Gay: Does It Matter?

/ Jack Marshall / 68 Comments

“In regard to homosexuality, I must say that I believe this is an attempt to remove oneself from the present, a refusal perhaps to perpetuate the endless farce of earthly life. You see, I make love to men daily, but in the imagination,” Barack Obama, 21, wrote to ex-girlfriend Alex McNear in November 1982. The suddenly sensational 1982 letter resurfaced when Obama biographer David Garrow gave a provocative interview on his subject.

“My mind is androgynous to a great extent and I hope to make it more so until I can think in terms of people, not women as opposed to men,” Obama wrote. “But, in returning to the body, I see that I have been made a man, and physically in life, I choose to accept that contingency.”

Oh. Wait, what?

McNear dated Obama when they both attended Occidental College in Los Angeles. She redacted the revealing paragraphs, and the letter came to be owned by Emory University somehow. Emory guards the letter and doesn’t permit it to be photographed or removed. Garrow’s friend Harvey Klehr transcribed the long-hidden paragraphs by hand and sent them to the historian, who then included them in his Obama-fest,“Rising Star.”

What’s going on here?

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Ethics Dunce (But We Knew That): The American Bar Association

/ Jack Marshall / 21 Comments

The ABA’s House of Delegates this week approved a resolution urging law schools to give either academic credit or monetary compensation to their students who serve as editors of law reviews or other academic journals. This is right in line with the logic that has college football and basketball plantations paying their student athletes, who already are getting scholarships and often diplomas they couldn’t justify based on their academic skills. Paying or otherwise compensating students who serve as law journal editors is just as reasonable, which is to say that it isn’t reasonable at all. In fact, the proposed practice, which some law schools already embrace, is unethical.

Reuters, in its news article about the ABA’s most recent intrusion into matters they ought to steer clear of, inadvertently explains why this concept is wrong-headed. It notes that these positions are “sought-after credentials that can bolster a law student’s job prospects.” Exactly, which means that students would gladly pay the law schools to get them. Being appointed as a law journal editor is its own reward: why should the recipients be paid for it too? Indeed, if the ABA’s reasoning applies, why only the editors? The other members of the law journals staffs are also providing valuable services to the school, its alumni, and the legal profession. They should be paid as well, or, to put it another way, none of the law journal staff should be paid, including the editors, just as student athletes shouldn’t be paid.

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Unethical Headline Of The Year (So Far): Conservative Website “Hot Air”

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

Ugh.

How disgraceful. Here is the headline: “Clarence Thomas must resign because he went on vacation or something.” Despicable.

Justice Thomas, the most extreme conservative jurist on the U.S. Supreme Court, already, in the assessment of Ethics Alarms, has been shown to have engaged in unethical judicial conduct by raising a flaming appearance of impropriety with his acceptance of lavish junkets from an activist conservative billionaire and his failure to report them. The verdict here in April was that Thomas is obligated to resign, and that is still the verdict. His inexcusable conduct not only undermines his own credibility but the credibility and legitimacy of the entire Supreme Court.

But now, there is evidence that Thomas’s conduct was even worse than what was reported last Spring. From Pro Publica:

A cadre of industry titans and ultrawealthy executives have treated him to far-flung vacations aboard their yachts, ushered him into the premium suites at sporting events and sent their private jets to fetch him — including, on more than one occasion, an entire 737. It’s a stream of luxury that is both more extensive and from a wider circle than has been previously understood. Like clockwork, Thomas’ leisure activities have been underwritten by benefactors who share the ideology that drives his jurisprudence. Their gifts include: At least 38 destination vacations, including a previously unreported voyage on a yacht around the Bahamas; 26 private jet flights, plus an additional eight by helicopter; a dozen VIP passes to professional and college sporting events, typically perched in the skybox; two stays at luxury resorts in Florida and Jamaica; and one standing invitation to an uber-exclusive golf club overlooking the Atlantic coast. While some of the hospitality, such as stays in personal homes, may not have required disclosure, Thomas appears to have violated the law by failing to disclose flights, yacht cruises and expensive sports tickets, according to ethics experts. Perhaps even more significant, the pattern exposes consistent violations of judicial norms, experts, including seven current and former federal judges appointed by both parties, told ProPublica. “In my career I don’t remember ever seeing this degree of largesse given to anybody,” said Jeremy Fogel, a former federal judge who served for years on the judicial committee that reviews judges’ financial disclosures. “I think it’s unprecedented.”

Jeez, I hope it’s unprecedented! The degree of arrogance and dunder-headedness that led Thomas to do this is astounding. He’s known he’s had a target on his back since he was nominated for SCOTUS; he knows, or should know, that he is going to be scrutinized for missteps like no other Justice in the Court’s history. For Thomas to accept such trips and luxuries from parties who stand to benefit from the results of the Court’s deliberations is as irresponsible for a controversial Supreme Court Justice as it would have been for Jackie Robinson to secretly run a numbers game while he was playing for the Dodgers.

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KABOOM! How Can A Company—A CANDY Company No Less!—Possibly Think This Packaging Is Responsible?

/ Jack Marshall / 42 Comments

Well, there goes my head again, and I really need it this weekend.

Hold on to yours: this really and truly is one of the “Pride” packages for Mars Inc.’s Skittles:

I don’t understand how this could happen in a major corpoation. In a pluralistic society, it is unethical for products and services to deliberately polarize the public, politically, socially, in any way whatsoever. True, the temptation for rainbow-colored Skittles to try to exploit the LGTBQ propaganda for marketing purposes must have been strong for some marketing execs with the cranial depth of a walnut shell, but the fact that sane parents don’t want their kids proselytized by their candy shouldn’t be that hard to grasp.

If the type is too small for you to read, the legends somewhere under the rainbow include “Joy is Resistance” and “Black Trans Lives Matter,” both of which are semi-incoherent, but the intent is clear. (Is the character with the sunglasses supposed to be in drag? What does “skate & live” mean? Is skating on the rainbow a metaphor for embracing an LGBTQ identity?)This is the equivalent of forced political speech, and the force is being applied to children. Holding that package sends an unintended message, weird as it is, and once that political message is associated with the brand, eating Skittles at all becomes a political act.

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The Ethics Zugzwang Of Trump vs. The Democrats, Part I: Comment Of The Day On “Today’s Res Ipsa Loquitur Donald Trump Moment”

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments

In his Comment of the Day, Chris Marschner, among Ethics Alarms’ most articulate and astute commenters, writes, “Please excuse my rambling rant.” No excusing is necessary: Chris was using a stream of consciousness technique to express that frustration many—I’m tempted to say anyone paying attention—feel as they face the prospect of having to choose between the reckless and untrustworthy creep who is the likely Republican nominee, and an insatiable, power-lusting Democratic Party that in its has made it crystal clear that it no longer respects the American mission, the Constitution, or much else.

His post was well-timed: I’ve been planning an examination of the ethics zugzwang Donald Trump’s legal problems (and the Democratic Party’s criminalizing of politics) citizens like Chris now find themselves in. That’s Scylla and Charybdis above: Odysseus had an easier choice deciding which would be more disastrous than what we might face in November of 2024.

Chris Marschner’s Comment of the Day will be Part I of a three part series, and here it is, triggered by the post, “Today’s Res Ipsa Loquitur Donald Trump Moment.”

***

You have changed my mind: I will not vote. Screw it.

There are no suitable candidates. You have lying Biden, who tells a gold star mother he brought his own son back in a flag draped coffin during the dignified transition of remains, and the other candidates are just asking for money and not giving me a different alternative. We have D.C. judges sitting in on Trumps arraignment. Why did Judge Amy Berman Jackson and other federal judges feel it necessary to be present in the courtroom for this arraignment other than to send a message? But all we seem to focus on is the stupid shit Trump says.

How ethical was it for Trump’s legal team to be given 1 day to respond to a late Friday motion to prevent Trump from getting discovery by Jack Smith’s team when the typical time frame is apparently 14 days and Trumps team pleaded for 3 days? Why are we not discussing the ethical dimensions of such judicial conduct? I don’t care if Trump is a mass murderer; when our judicial system is abused against the rights of an accused we have bigger problems than Chris Christie’s feelings. If it is unethical to behave as Trump does when his adversary makes a point to harm him, then we should also be discussing the ethics of Christie, who starts the fights.

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Everyone, Literally Everyone, Needs To See This…

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

Whatever one thinks of Tucker Carlson, the interview is a public service and raises too many ethics questions to count.

It is nicely paired with this revelation…

Whatever one thinks of Tucker Carlson, the interview is a public service and raises too many ethics questions to count. Is the previous chief of the Capitol Police (full disclosure: the current occupant is an old friend) a completely reliable, objective and unbiased source of information regarding the January 6, 2020 riot? Of course not. Nonetheless, the lack of interest in his perspective displayed by the January 6 Star Chamber and the mainstream media is both indefensible and suspicious.

Your reactions should be both helpful and illuminating.