Unethical Quote Of The Month: San Francisco Homeless Resident Joseph Peterson

/ Jack Marshall / 23 Comments

“I just stole to eat.”

 —Joseph Peterson, a homeless man in San Francisco, lamenting the demise of the Whole Foods in his neighborhood and attempting to draw a material distinction between the rampant theft from the store by those seeking to sell what they stole, and his own shoplifting.

And there it is! In such carefully crafted rationalizations lie the seeds of societal rot. Peterson thinks his personal shoplifting—he cops to stealing macaroni and cheese and chicken from the hot food bar at the now closed grocery store a number of times, but believes that his theft is justifiable, unlike those who wanted to sell their heist for cash. Also believing his thefts were justifiable are many of San Francisco’s elected officials. They also believe that the “bad” shoplifters in Peterson’s view are equally justified, and in fact they are. What’s the ethical difference between stealing food to eat it, and stealing food to sell and use the money for other needs? There is none. In both cases, the expense of the food stolen is borne by other city residents, who will have to pay higher prices for their food, unless the prices become so high that they resort to theft as well.

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From The “Res Ipsa Loquitur” Files: This Is The Level Of Critical Thought Being Cultivated At The University of North Carolina

/ Jack Marshall / 42 Comments

Yes, these students believe that bumper stickers and lawn signs are profound revelations of discovered truth.

In related news, some UNC students “drove home” because they “were scared for their safety in anticipation” of Mike Pence speaking on campus. That’s Mike Pence—you know, the almost invisible VP in the Trump administration who allowed the cast of “Hamilton” to harass him at a performance, and who will soon take his place in history among so many irrelevant and forgettable Vice-Presidents like Walter Mondale and Dan Quayle.

Scary!

In Spain, Putting Little People Out Of Work In Order To Save Them

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

The cognitive dissonance created by the use of little people, aka. dwarfs and midgets, to make normal size people laugh has bothered me for a very long time. I remember attending the final game of Baltimore Orioles great Brooks Robinson in 1977 (he retired when he decided he could no longer play up to his standards, rather than hanging on and collecting his contract salary to the bitter end. Those were the days…). As a part of the ceremony, the crowd was treated to the spectacle of a 3’8″ man wearing Robinson’s number re-enacting some of his most famous fielding plays at third base.

The audience roared; my family and I were appalled, but then, that was Baltimore. I decided, after pondering the matter, that eventually the bad taste of such performances would make them obsolete, which would be a boon to civilization, but if height-challenged individuals consented to participating in the acts and were paid, the “entertainment” was at least arguably ethical. It wasn’t unethical. And sure enough, when the Orioles franchise was sold a few years later, the use of Little People as gags and mascots ended.

Now comes the news that Spain’s parliament last week banned bullfighting featuring dwarfs in costumes, including routines where the the Little People pretended to be bull-fighters. In those instances, they “fought” small bulls and calves but didn’t hurt them, unlike the full-size matadors who stab and kill the full-size bulls. Little People also have entertained bull-fight crowds in Spain for decades by performing like American rodeo clowns, chasing and being chased by the bulls. As with the Baltimore Orioles’ small performers, the practice is slowly losing support and popularity.

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“Phantom” And Lyrical Integrity

/ Jack Marshall / 46 Comments

“The Phantom of the Opera” finally closed on Broadway last month after running more than 35 years and a record-setting 13,981 performances. Most of the musicals on the list of the longest-running shows are junk between “Phantom” and #17, “Fiddler on the Roof” (though not #7, “A Chorus Line”), but “The Phantom of the Opera” isn’t, though more for its staging and atmospherics than its music. I saw the show long ago at the West End in London, prepared to find it over-rated, but it really isn’t.

However, before it passes into history (and you’re not going to see a lot of high school, college and community theater productions of this monster), I have to mention something about the lyrics (by Charles Hart; Andrew Lloyd Webber composed the music) that bothered me the first time I heard the score, when I saw the show, and now. The ethics issue is integrity, and I know some readers are going to decide that the topic of cheating in hit Broadway show lyrics is too trivial to think about. Au contraire, as the Phantom might say (the show does take place in Paris, after all). Nothing involving ethics is too trivial to think about: that’s been the operating principle here from the beginning. Besides, I write song lyrics as part of what is laughingly called my job. I care about doing it right.

In the title song of “The Phantom of the Opera” (called, as I bet you could guess, “The Phantom of the Opera”) the rather central word “opera” is pronounced two different ways to fit with the music. “Opera” is generally pronounced in English as a two-syllable word (“op-ra”), and indeed it is in part of the song, as you will note in the ridiculous music video made with the show’s original “Christine,” Sarah Brightman, above. However, through most of the song, opera is sung as three-syllable word, “op-er-a.”

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Ethics Heroes: Dane County (Wisconsin) County Supervisors

/ Jack Marshall / 19 Comments

Race-baiting, race bullying and using the threat of being tarred as racist have worked speculatively well as unethical political weapons since Barack Obama’s party and supporters perfected them. Thus it is gratifying to see a municipal body refuse to be intimidated when confronted with the demands of a shameless practitioner and her supporters.

Dane County Executive Joe Parisi nominated Rep. Shelia Stubbs (D-Madison) for director of Dane County Human Services, a position that oversees the county’s largest agency with a $240 million budget and around 800 employees. Almost simultaneously with her nomination Stubbs began mau-mauing those who had to approve the appointment. The weekend following the announcement from Parisi, Stubbs told members of the End Times Ministries International, a church she co-founded and serves as a pastor, that members of the board were putting her under scrutiny because she is black, saying “they have never had a black lead a department, and I would be the first.” She urged her congregation to email the Dane County Board supervisors and demand that she be confirmed. This was sufficient to inspire the good parishioners to threaten the board members with violence.

There were ample non-racial reasons to question Stubbs’ appointment. She was heard on video saying that she planned on keeping both her state legislative job and her new position once she was confirmed, thus acquiring two paychecks for two supposedly full-time jobs. “They said I can’t do two jobs at one time,” Stubbs says on the video. “I can walk and eat and talk if I need to. It’s my choice if I want to [resign].”

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Ethics Quote Of The Day: Ethics Villain Dr. Anthony Fauci

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

“Man, I think, almost paradoxically, you had people who were on the fence about getting vaccinated thinking, why are they forcing me to do this? And that sometimes-beautiful independent streak in our country becomes counterproductive.”

—Dr. Anthony Fauci, major architect of the Wuhan virus lockdown catastrophe, in a discussing how the government’s dictatorial vaccination policies caused a drop in pubic trust of all vaccinations.

I have a lot to write about Dr. Fauci’s long interview in the New York Times, as well as some of his other jaw-dropping comments last week, but I’m lacking time and energy right now, and this quote demands immediate attention.

Fauci, who used his reputation and influence to trap the United States into a disastrous course of action that caused lasting harm to the nation, its culture, its economy, its children and society, articulates above the totalitarian’s lament about the United States of America. We are hearing this a great deal of late, as the Democratic Party, now the locus of totalitarian aspiration here, is increasingly open and candid about what so many of its leaders hate about America. Too many people just refuse to take orders from the smarter, more virtuous, more social justice-minded in power. Clearly, something needs to be done about it.

There’s nothing paradoxical about the phenomenon Fauci’s whining about at all. The lying, manipulation, false “facts” and abuse of authority used by health officials, Fauci prominent among them, eventually became apparent. Americans, who call themselves that rather than United Kingdom citizens because a nation was organized around the bold theory that the people—not kings, not unaccountable groups, not “experts”— have the right and duty to decide what’s in their best interest, returned to core values. Millions of people moved here to embrace the new experiment, and as a result, the independent streak is more deeply embedded in the culture than our native fans of dictatorship seem to comprehend. Decades of indoctrination from the now fully complicit news media and most of the education sector have weakened it and threaten it, but like the flag over Fort McHenry, it’s still there.

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It Pains Me To Say This, But It Just Might Be Time To Stop Assuming That The FBI Is Ethical, Trustworthy Or Competent…

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

If you watch TV even half as much as I do, the image of the Federal Bureau of Investigation hammered into your skull weekly is that of the most dedicated, well-trained, well-run and honorable law enforcement organization on Earth. There are three hour-long dramas focusing on the FBI’s heroism; its work is also central to “Blacklist.” On the streaming platforms and on cable, special series and older FBI-centered shows are abundant: “Criminal Minds,” “Without a Trace,” “White Collar,” “Night Agent,” “The X-Files,” “Blindspot,” “Quantico,” “The Rookie,” “Shooter”…too many to list, so I won’t list them all. Movies in which FBI agents are the heroes are legion There is no agency or organization that has a more suffocating and relentless indoctrination presence in the popular culture than the FBI.

It is no wonder the that public and the media are inclined to pooh-pooh or ignore entirely the massive evidence of sinister and illegal FBI activities devoted to bringing down the Trump administration, the machinations of James Comey, and the other scandals. Periodically some glimmers of the corruption and abuse of power that has infected the FBI’s culture since the long reign of its shadowy creator J. Edgar Hoover sneak into various programs: the lying FBI forensic expert whose work is exposed in the documentary “Staircase;” and the two excellent docudramas exploring the horrors of Waco and its cover-up are examples.

Clearly, the time has come to discard the presumption of virtue that has protected the FBI for generations. It is at least as inept, corrupt, politicized and incompetent as the rest of federal government, and perhaps even more so.

An episode in Boston earlier this month—barely reported by the mainstream media, of course—strongly hints at an “Emperor’s New Clothes” situation. The FBI was holding a special training exercise at the Revere Hotel in downtown Boston in coordination with the U.S. Army. Role players—that is, actors—were supposed to help create a realistic simulation for the agents who had to react to unexpected developments. Around 10 p.m. on the evening of April 6, FBI agents banged loudly on the door of the room where a Delta Air Lines pilot was staying. The surprised guest was handcuffed when he opened the door, detained and interrogated, and thrown into the shower.

Oopsie! Wrong room number.

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A Cautionary Legal Ethics Tale: The Paralegal’s Goof

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

There are a lot of ethics lessons in a recent lawsuit out of Connecticut.

William Cote, the lawyer for the seller in a real estate transaction, had $159,000 that he was supposed to wire to the Freedom Mortgage Corp. He had received a correct payoff statement with accurate wire instructions, but before he completed the payment, his paralegal received an email from the seller—it claimed— changing the wiring information. The new statement specified wire instructions for a different bank and account, and the paralegal passed in on to Cote, who then wired the money to the designated account—which had been set up by a scamster to snatch the money away.

Cote didn’t realize the gravamen of his error until more than a month later when the seller said he received a statement from the Freedom Mortgage Corp. reflecting a balance still owed on his loan. The buyer of the property is now suing both the seller and Cote because the title to the home she purchased is still encumbered by the seller’s mortgage.

Well…

  • Lawyers are responsible for the ethical conduct of their non-lawyer employees, including basic competence. Neglecting their training is an ethics violation.
  • The invasion of technology into every aspect of the legal profession requires vigilance and ongoing education. A firm or lawyer that does not have procedures and software in place to check the validity of emails is asking for a disaster. More than that, regular trainings of staff, including legal and non-legal, on technology advances and emerging perils are crucial. As with the non-lawyer trainings, they are too often skipped or made perfunctory.
  • Cope was probably busy with other matters when his paralegal passed along the phony change to the wiring instructions. Obviously, he should have asked some crucial questions, but instead just acted on trust. Trusting one’s staff is a good thing, but when so much money is involved, it is the lawyer’s duty to make sure a non-lawyer assistant hasn’t missed anything. Meanwhile, distracted law practice is as dangerous as distracted driving.

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Source: ABA Journal

From Wisconsin, A Double Standards Classic

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

I don’t understand how this could happen at all.

In Wausau, Wisconsin, an investigation by the school board after a student complaint found that East High School’s band teacher, Robert Perkins, used “racist and sexist” language in the course of his teaching directed at Asian-American students in his class.

But it was okay, because he didn’t mean anything by it!

“While a preponderance of the evidence shows that Mr. Perkins did not engage in harassing or discriminatory behavior, he did engage in insensitive and unprofessional conduct,” the district superintendent wrote in a letter this week. “Witnesses indicate that he did use language that could be insensitive to students of different protected classes, including race and sex, but that language does not rise to the level of discrimination or harassment.” The letter argued that Perkins often uses humor to “engage students and create a ‘fun’ environment,'” and creates a “safe space” for all students, but that Perkins’ “humor” sometimes caused “unease” among students when “his comments are racial or sexist in nature.” However, the letter assures parents, Perkins “does not mean to harm anyone.”

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Rainy Day End-Of-Week Ethics Dry-Off, 4/28/23: Minutemen Bad, Alito Coy, Kamala Incoherent, And More

/ Jack Marshall / 24 Comments

Great: I appeal to readers to offer me a glimmer of hope in today’s Open Forum, and the result is the fewest entries in months. So that’s the way it’s going to be, is it?

1. Well, THIS isn’t going to make me feel any better, or you either, I hope…In Contra Costa County, California, administrators at the Mount Diablo Unified School District believe that Concord High School’s Minutemen mascot is controversial and should be replaced. You know, the Minutemen, as in the patriots who fought and died at Lexington, Concord and Bunker Hill. They are controversial now…because, why exactly? Apparently because the entire existence of the United States of America and what it stands for is offensive to those who dwell in Woke World. Concord High School, founded in the late 1960s, adopted the image and name in solidarity with its namesake in Concord, Massachusetts, where in 1775 the Minutemen had one of their finest moments about a half an hour from where I grew up in Arlington, then Menotomy, Mass. The school’s principal, Julene MacKinnon, now wants to “make sure that we have a mascot that represents everyone,” reported KNTV-TV. By what logic does a Minuteman not represent all Americans? Well, you know, he’s a man

…and that is inherently touchy. He is also white, since most Minutemen were, but that skin shade is inherently offensive on the West Coast. Plus the Minuteman is carrying a gun, and guns are evil. Can’t Julene just pretend he’s gay or bi- or trans? Can’t they just darken the logo and make him a black Minuteman?

Some parents, alumni and students have raised objections, but it is to no avail. This is how American history, values and traditions die the death of a thousand cuts.

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