“A Republic, If You Can Keep It”: Ethics Reflections On Chicago’s Mayoral Election

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

Having just rejected a hard-left Democratic mayor whose leadership and policies left the city of Chicago in the midst of crises in its schools and on the streets, the besieged city’s voters took stock, thought hard, and elected a new mayor who promises more of the same. Brandon Johnson, a Cook County commissioner and Chicago Teachers Union organizer, squeaked out a victory over Paul Vallas, a former Chicago Public Schools CEO. This indicates mass incompetence and ignorance by the city’s electorate, as well as apathy and a flat learning curve.

Let’s begin with the fact that Johnson, who advocates raising taxes (on “the rich,” of course) didn’t deliver on many of his own financial obligations. He finally had to pay up once he was elected, because Chicago has a law blocking deadbeats from taking office. Before that, however, he owed $3,357 in water and sewer bills as well as$1,044 in unpaid traffic tickets dating back to 2014 and 2015. Johnson’s campaign’s official rationalization for this was essentially the ever-popular “Everybody does it”:

“Like many working and middle class Chicagoans, the Johnson household has received various fines and fees from the City of Chicago over the years. These fines and fees are on a previously established payment plan and are on schedule to be fully resolved before Brandon Johnson takes office as our next mayor.”

But the mayor of the city is not like other citizens. He (or she) is supposed to be an exemplary citizen, and one who can lead by example. Johnson, obviously, can’t. The new Mayor-Elect also defaulted on a Capital One credit card debt of more than $3,600 in 2016. Chicago, meanwhile, is in the midst of its own fiscal problems. Choosing a guy with Johnson’s cavalier attitude toward financial obligations is pure incompetence.

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“Apparently Donald Trump Is A Ham Sandwich,” Continued: Prof. Turley Weighs In, Among Others

/ Jack Marshall / 40 Comments

I’ve been looking for commentary by legal and ethics experts I trust that defend Alvin Bragg’s indictment of Donald Trump, now that the thing is in black and white. (Speaking of White: old Popehat blogger Ken White was one of the first I checked. The former Ethics Alarms Award-winner as best ethics blogger has so far avoided the topic, I suspect because he regards explaining why an indictment of someone he obviously detests is a lot of hooey with the same eagerness he applies to having sex with a horseshoe crab.) In the earlier post today, Ethics Alarms looked at Andrew McCarthy’s analysis, which was searing in its contempt for Bragg’s efforts. Later, I discovered that one of the Washington Post’s worst knee-jerk progressive members of its editorial board, Ruth Marcus, wrote,

…the indictment unsealed on Tuesday is disturbingly unilluminating, and the theory on which it rests is debatable at best, unnervingly flimsy at worst.That is a scary situation when it comes to the first criminal charges ever lodged against a former president.

Then she almost immediately demonstrated why I hold her in such contempt by adding,

I’m not saying prosecutors will lose this case. They could well win, and I hope they do, because a failure to secure a conviction will only inflame Trump and his supporters in their claims that the criminal justice system is being weaponized against them.

Got that? She hopes Bragg wins a bad case and Trump is convicted because Trump and his supporters will have evidence to support the “claim” that the criminal justice system is being weaponized against them. Somebody explain to Marcus, a lawyer, though it always astonished me that she is, that ethical lawyers don’t want defendants to be convicted on bogus charges no matter who they are.

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Now THAT’S An Unethical Concession Speech!

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

Wisconsin’s Supreme Court election Tuesday gave Democrats (well, liberals/progressives—the election is supposedly non-partisan) a one-vote majority as it faces deliberations over the state’s abortion ban, its gerrymandered legislative districts and the voting rules for the 2024 presidential election. Milwaukee County Judge Janet Protasiewicz’s defeated former state Supreme Court justice Daniel Kelly and ended 15 years of conservative control of the Wisconsin Supreme Court.

Kelly’s concession speech made Richard Nixon look gracious. Ethics Dunce, Unethical Quote, Incompetent UN-elected official—Kelly qualifies for several EA designations, none of them positive. His speech alone shows that the voters made the right choice. Who wants a judge with such atrocious judgment?

What a jerk.

________________

Pointer: valkygrrl

New Rule! Only White, Straight Men Need To Be Civil

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

Last week, a looming $30 million budget shortfall prompted NPR to eliminate 10% of its staff across all its departments.  It killed several podcasts and so far, 84 employees are gone; more will follow.

One of the podcasts sent into the archives was “Louder Than A Riot,” which explored how hip-hop’s “Black women and queer folk have dealt with the same oppression [hip-hop] was built to escape.” So after getting the bad news, “Louder Than A Riot’s” staff took to Twitter and accused NPR of bias in its layoff decisions:

What support for that did the angry staff have? Oh, none. But NPR is a nest of progressives who don’t believe in ethics, so playing the discrimination card was a reflex, and Facts Don’t Matter. As it turned out, NPR did engage in discrimination, but the “good’ kind:  the layoffs had been  “structured in a way” so they would not disproportionately affect people of color and other marginalized groups. In other words, skin color and sexual proclivities were used to decide who to fire, and being white and non-LGTBQ was held against employees.

That’s unethical.

Also illegal.

Also “Diversity Equity and Inclusion” exemplified. Continue reading →

Apparently Donald Trump Is A Ham Sandwich [Corrected]

/ Jack Marshall / 40 Comments

Of course, we’ve known for decades that the man was a ham. Yesterday, however, unethical prosecutor Alvin Bragg provided decisive evidence that the former POTUS is also a ham sandwich, with an abusive grand jury indictment that perfectly embodied the old saw (first coined by former Chief Judge of the New York Court of Appeals Sol Wachtler) that district attorneys could get grand juries to “indict a ham sandwich.”

When the breathlessly anticipated indictment finally came down from the grand jury (here is the indictment), it fulfilled the worst predictions of critics.

“Oh, we have to wait to see the indictment” was the mantra from Bragg’s defenders, and that was sort-of true. However, we already knew that this was a bad case: the statute of limitations has lapsed, Bragg has no jurisdiction to enforce federal law, the act of paying for a non-disclosure is not a crime, the claim that the pay-off was really a campaign contribution is based on circumstantial evidence at best, the key witness is Michael Cohen, one of the sleaziest lawyers in the professions long line of sleazy lawyers and convicted perjeror, and both the Justice Department and Bragg himself had already decided it was too weak to prosecute, at least to prosecute ethically. Moreover, Bragg’s “statement of facts” before the indictment (which you can read here), made the case sound just as weak as many suspected it was.

When we learned that there were 34 counts, we thought, or at least I did, “Wow! Bragg must have a lot more to pin on Trump than Stormy Daniels and Michael Cohen!”

Uh, no.

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Ethics Dunces: Cynthia Kwiecinski

/ Jack Marshall / 31 Comments

Bullies, toxic language police, mean-spirited feminists, and, to be blunt but appropriately so, assholes, Kwiecinski and Colby are the co-chair and executive assistant respectively to the Easthampton Schools committee that offered long-time school principal Vito Perrone the position of superintendent. When Perrone sent an email to the two after his selection addressing them as “Ladies”…

…the two ladies were so offended by what they termed an unforgivable “microaggression” that the job offer was rescinded. Kwiecinski told Perrone that using “ladies” as a greeting was hostile and derogatory. Moreover, “the fact that he didn’t know that as an educator was a problem.'” In the email, Perrone had opened up the question of whether he could get higher pay and more sick days, since the total package Easthampton Schools had offered represented a pay cut from his current job. That, however was not cited as a reason for the withdrawn offer. Just a single word. That’s how the Left rolls these days. So many previously common and harmless words are taboo that it’s difficult to express some things. (And that, you know, is the point.)

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Ethically And Legally, Yeshiva University Can’t Have It Both Ways

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

Yeshiva University is in a legal fight with a group of LGBTQ students, the YU Pride Alliance, that demands that the Modern Orthodox Jewish university recognize their campus club. To make the argument that it can refuse to do so, Yeshiva is claiming that it is a religious institution, which would which would exempt it from anti-discrimination laws under the First Amendment.

There’s a problem, though, a rather substantial one. Before the 2021 lawsuit, Yeshiva held itself out as an educational institution, which made it eligible for public funds but also meant that it could not defy city and state non-discrimination laws. The institution has received an estimated $230 million in taxpayer dollars to pay for the construction and renovation of its facilities, among other expenses, when it claimed to be an educational institution before 2021.

Now Yeshiva is stuck. The chairman of the State Senate Judiciary Committee has stated, “Regardless of anyone’s motives, misrepresentation to procure public money is dishonest and could potentially violate state law.” If it acquired those state funds legitimately, then Yeshiva cannot deny the students their organization without breaking the law. If the school has always been a religious institution as it now claims, it engaged in fraud by claiming otherwise to get $230 million dollars. Continue reading →

If You Can’t Write A Clearer Law Than Tennessee’s Anti-Drag Statute, It Deserves To Be Overturned

/ Jack Marshall / 46 Comments

A federal judge in Tennessee, U.S. District Judge Thomas Parker, temporarily blocked the state’s new law supposedly designed to protect children from the evils of drag shows. He entered a restraining order before the law, signed by Republican Governor Bill Lee, was scheduled to go into effect two days ago, because he ruled that it was probably unconstitutional—vague, and overbroad.

Good, because it’s a terribly-written law. Observe:

SECTION 1. Tennessee Code Annotated, Section 7-51-1401, is amended by adding the following language as a new subdivision:
“Adult cabaret performance” means a performance in a location other than an adult cabaret that features topless dancers, go-go dancers, exotic dancers, strippers, male or female impersonators who provide entertainment that appeals to a prurient interest, or similar entertainers, regardless of whether or not performed for consideration..”

SECTION 2. Tennessee Code Annotated, Section 7-51-1407, is amended by adding the following language as a new subsection:
(c)
(1) It is an offense for a person to engage in an adult cabaret performance:
(A) On public property; or
(B) In a location where the adult cabaret performance could be viewed by a person who is not an adult.

That’s all you need to read. The challenge to the law is quite right: it’s a First Amendment violation. As Rolling Stone’s John Freeman wrote, Continue reading →

Jim Palmer Endorses The King’s Pass

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

Jim Palmer, Hall of Fame pitcher, sometimes serves as the color man on Orioles broadcasts. He’s pretty good at it too, especially when he is analyzing the pitching. During yesterday’s Red Sox-O’s game, which I had to watch on the Orioles network because the Red Sox feed was blacked out, Palmer was talking about Sox slugger Rafael Devers becoming the first batter in MLB history to b called because he wasn’t ready for the pitch under the new pitch clock rules. His gaffe undermined a burgeoning Sox comeback rally in the 8th inning.

“It kind of left an empty feeling, and I’m not even for the Red Sox, “Palmer said. “I mean, you’re in the stands, you paid all that money, and your best hitter is called out because he’s looking at the pitcher a second or two too late. I understand why we’re doing it, but boy, it was disappointing.”

Essentially what Palmer was arguing for, though while not having his most articulate moment, was Rationalization #11, the King’s Pass, also known as “The Star Syndrome.” It makes sense that Jim would favor the Star Syndrome, where a team’s best players get away with misconduct that get third-string catchers released, since he was undoubtedly the beneficiary of it during his long and successful career. But it’s unethical thinking like that that causes NBA refs to hold back on fouls on star players in close games (and why I don’t watch the NBA any more). A few months ago, I heard another baseball “expert” say that umpires shouldn’t call batters out on close checked swings to end a one-run game. That’s advocating a system when rules are enforced differently depending on when they are violated, at the discretion of the umpire. Such a system resembles Calvinball, and such a sport has no integrity. Palmer also seemed to be suggesting that Devers should get a break because he’s a star, but an ordinary hitter should not.

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Ethics Quiz: The Comic Strip’s Hidden Message

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

Yikes.

In February, 2019, venerable ( and usually funny) Sunday comics feature “Non Sequitur” included a hidden message tucked into the corner of a strip . Cartoonist Wiley Miller had scrawled, barely legibly, “Go Fuck yourself, Trump.”

This led some newspapers that had run the strip to cancel the comic permanently. Most, however, did nothing: the strip is still running in, for example, the Washington Post.

Dallas Morning News editor Mike Wilson said that Miller was going “around his editors and even his own syndicate to publish something he must have known we wouldn’t accept. We’ll have no trouble finding a better way to spend the $8,000 we would’ve paid for that strip.” For its part, Kansas City-based Andrews McMeel Syndication, which distributes “Non Sequitur,” apologized, saying,

“We are sorry we missed the language in our editing processIf we had discovered it, we would not have distributed the cartoon without it being removed. We apologize to ‘Non Sequitur’s’ clients and readers for our oversight.”

Miller’s explanation was essentially “Oopsie!” He said he had entered the vulgarity in the corner when he was angry with then-President Trump, and forgot to remove it. He wasn’t trying to sneak the insult by anyone.

Okaaay. Do you believe that?

Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day is…

What is the fair and responsible punishment for Sunday comics cartoonist who does what Miller did?

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