Unethical Quote Of The Month: Ethics Mega-Dunce Kim Sill

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

“If your beliefs are not in line with ours, we will not adopt a pet to you.”

—Kim Sill, founder of the Shelter Hope Pet Shop in Thousand Oaks, California in her shop’s weekly newsletter.

Pro tip for Kim: if you are going to say something really stupid and offensive in public, at least do it grammatically.

Other than that, this obnoxious, virtue-signalling Constitutional scholar is informing all that she wants to tear down a crucial support-beam in the entire democratic structure of the United States. While discrimination on the basis of political affiliations and viewpoints is not forbidden under civil rights and public accommodation laws, it is a surefire way to guarantee civil unrest and a society that is divided and miserable in which to live. The pet store’s bigotry—and that’s what it is, bigotry—violates the spirit of the First Amendment and the well-established formula for a fair and open society.

But never mind, Kim knows best.

Here is the rest of her screed: Continue reading →

Starbucks, Rock Star Of The Great Stupid!

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

A statement by virtue-signaling addict and Starbucks’s chief executive, Howard Schultz that the company is considering ending its open bathroom policy has provoked speculation in the conservative media and blogosphere that “The Great Stupid (my term, not theirs) is finally receding. Don’t count on it.

Before discussing Schultz’s sudden epiphany, let’s review, shall we? Ethics Alarms last visited this particularly deranged bit of progressive Kabuki four years ago under the heading, “The Tragedy Of The Commons Bites Starbucks (Good!).” I wrote in part,

Remember how Starbucks responded to being race-shamed when a Philadelphia store manager told two black men to either buy something or leave the store? It decreed that anyone could hang out at stores without having to be customers, and use the bathrooms too.  Any fool could predict that this policy would be disastrous….progressive! Compassionate! But disastrous. Now we learn:

A New York Post team investigated several Manhattan bathrooms and found that there wasn’t an open stall.

…A half-dozen toilets were locked or barricaded for no clear reason. Others were closed for prolonged “cleaning,” which an insider said was needed after extreme soiling caused by drug-using, incontinent vagrants.

“Letting everybody in has resulted in nobody getting in,” an employee at one branch fumed.

“Rest Room closed,” declared signs at 399 Seventh Ave. (entrance on West 32nd Street) and at a branch at Pearl Street and Maiden Lane. At 252 W. 31st St., the road to relief was blocked by garbage cans. Furniture and boxes formed a barrier at 61 W. 56th St.

A rope and traffic cones barred the way at 38 Park Row. When a desperate visitor asked if the loo would reopen any time soon, a barista directed him to a Dunkin’ Donuts nearby.

Why would the bathrooms need “prolonged cleaning”? Perhaps the experience of the Seattle shops provides an explanation:

Several Starbucks workers in Seattle say that they’re encountering hypodermic needles on the job nearly every day and that they’ve had to take antiviral medications to protect themselves from HIV and hepatitis.

Three employees at the coffee giant in northern Seattle told the local news station KIRO 7 that visitors would dispose of the needles in store restrooms, often in tampon-disposal boxes, and that workers would then come in contact with them while cleaning and were sometimes accidentally poked.

KIRO 7 said the three employees provided hospital, pharmacy, and insurance receipts showing that they took antiviral medications to protect against HIV and hepatitis after being poked by needles at work.

Providing extra safety training and prophylactic care for employees can be expensive. The extra costs could have been a contributing factor in a spate of recent layoffs.

Starbucks will lay off 350 corporate employees amid a broader effort to revamp its global operations even as the coffeehouse chain’s former top executive gears up for a 2020 presidential bid.

Chief Executive Officer Kevin Johnson announced the 5 percent reduction of Starbucks’ global workforce in a staff email on Tuesday, writing that the layoffs are “a result of work that has been eliminated, de-prioritized or shifting ways of working within the company.”

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Ethics Point Made

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

I try to avoid memes, but attention must be paid  to this photo of his own garden by conservative blogger Charles Glasser. It appealed to me for several reasons:

1. Our home is next to an elementary school with a prominent “Gun Free Zone” notice.

2. Our neighborhood has had a sudden explosion of the bunny population, much to Spuds’ delight.

3. The “Gun Free Zone” is one of the better examples of foolish virtue-signaling, useless regulations regarding firearms, and general incompetence and dishonesty among the anti-gun crowd. Glasser’s sign will have exactly as much deterrence effect as a “Gun Free Zone” sign would have had on any of the school shooters.

4. It demonstrates the value of “Do something!” solutions.

And don’t get me started talking about the armed bunnies…

There are several comments on the post like this one:

“You need to follow that sign up with a response policy. If a bunny does invade that garden, rather than frighten it off or shoot it, you must stand around discussing what to do for at least an hour while the bunny munches away.”

A Popeye: I Have To Fisk This Smoking Gun Opinion Piece, Because My Head Will Explode Beyond Repair If I Don’t…Part 2: “The Hell I Won’t!”And “The Great Replacement”

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

The comments on Wajahat Ali ‘s anti-US rant almost make my planned fisking of his revolting opinion piece unnecessary. Almost.

If you want to read his lament “Is It Time for Me to Leave America?”without my annoying commentary, go to the link or Part I, here.

I am in sympathy with the commenters who feel that Ali’s gaslighting isn’t worthy of the time it takes to read or rebut: it is a bit like shooting the proverbial fish in a barrel. But as soon to be Sheriff (Black) Bart (Cleavon Little) says before he hits Taggart (Slim Pickens) over the head with a shovel in “Blazing Saddles,” “I gotta!”

Now that I’m committed, however, it is clear that I can’t begin to do Ali’s rant justice—meaning to punch it in its metaphorical mouth so it slides down into a mudhole—in a single post. So I’ll primarily devote Part 2 to his “Great Replacement” claim.

Here we go…

“Is it time to leave? I’ve caught myself asking my wife this question several times over the past year.”

I’ll state up front: I don’t believe him. The threat to leave the United States is a uniquely leftist bluff, and almost always employed to cheaply make the point that “I really, really don’t like where democracy is taking us right now.” The proper reaction to that is, “Oh, shut up. Running away is un-American; if that’s your response, you don’t belong here anyway.” It’s such an arrogant and presumptuous threat.  Why do you think anyone cares whether you leave or not, man? “Do things the way I want or I’m quitting!” is infantile. Continue reading →

Ethics Hero: Flaviane Carvalho

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

I love this story, and not just because it supports several Ethics Alarms principles, like the duty to confront, the duty to rescue, and the duty to fix the problem.

In Orlando on January 1, 2021, Mrs. Potato restaurant employee Flaviane Carvalho noticed that a young boy was sitting secluded from his parents and a a young girl. Carvalho said the boy was wearing a mask and hoodie as he sat at the table along with two adults and a young girl. She also noticed that he had a scratch in between in his eyebrows and wasn’t eating, even though food had been brought to the table. She asked the table if their food and drinks were all right, and when the one of the adults replied that the boy would eat his dinner at home, Carvalho said she began to think something was seriously wrong.

She did not decide to “minding her own business,” but instead decided that as a proactive and ethical member of society, this was her business. Carvalho stood behind the boy’s parents and held up a note asking the boy if he was OK. When the 11-year-old shook his head, she wrote a second note asking, “Do you need help?”  This time, the boy nodded yes. Carvalho called her boss and then called 911.

Police arrived and questioned the child, who told detectives he had suffered abuse at the hands of his stepfather, identified as Timothy Lee Wilson II.  Wilson was arrested at the restaurant, and the boy’s mother, Kristen Swann, was taken into custody on later that week after the boy made additional disclosures of alleged abuse.

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Thank Goodness It’s The Friday End Of The Work Week Ethics Warm-up, 6/10/2022!

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

Three notable markers in ethics lore occurred on June 10. In 1752, Ben Franklin did something creative, inventive, bold and really, really stupid, flying a kite during a thunder storm to collect lightning in a jar. He pulled it off, too, because he was lucky, as usual. Ben just as easily could have been electrocuted, meaning that he would not have been around to add his considerable wisdom, negotiating skills and talents to the founding of our nation, which might not exist today if old Ben was a-moldering in the grave when they needed him in Philadelphia. A things turned out, Ben’s kite-flying experiment added to his fame, but it just as easily could have been an epic disaster for the world.

And that, my friends, is moral luck.

Another ethics landmark occurred on this date in 1692 in Salem Village the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Bridget Bishop, the first victim of the Salem witch trials, was hanged and 18 more innocent colonists were executed (none were burned) before the epic example of how fear, ignorance and political ruthlessness can turn good people into monsters. In 1976, a scientist published a paper arguing that the young girls’ weird behavior that triggered the witch trials may not have been caused, as “The Crucible” has it, by teenage rebellion, but by a hallucinogenic fungus that sometimes infects the type of grain the Salem colonists used for bread. The theory has substantial support in the scientific community if not so much among historians.

The witch trials are particularly relevant today, because of the Jan. 6 hearings…

Finally, on this date in 1935, Bill Wilson and Dr. Robert Smith, two recovering alcoholics, founded Alcoholics Anonymous, or AA, a 12-step rehabilitation and support group program that has helped millions of people worldwide (including many very close to me) battle a terrible and widespread disease that destroys lives, families, and businesses.

1. “A Nation of Assholes,” redux. As regular readers here know, I posted A Nation Of Assholes: The Ultimate, Undeniable And Crucial Reason Donald Trump Must Never Be President nearly seven years ago, and all has transpired as I predicted. Well, not exactly as I predicted: I assumed that the rising generations would have their language and civility corrupted by having an unrepentant vulgarian and boor in the White House, but I did not predict the adults who were his adversaries quickly adopting equally unethical habits, and in some cases, worse ones. I was reminded again of this phenomenon—which as far as I can tell, only Ethics Alarms flagged—yesterday when a controversy emerged over Boston Celtics fans chanting “Fuck you Draymond” at Warriors court thug Draymond Green during yesterday’s NBA Finals game at the Boston Garden. As a born-and bred Bostonian, I can testify that not all that long ago such sporting event crowd conduct would have been unimaginable in the birthplace of Benjamin Franklin. The critics of yesterday’s disgrace concentrated on a “Think of the children!” tactic, which misses the ethics point. Chanting “fuck” is disrespectful of everyone.

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Friday Freakin’ Forum!

/ Jack Marshall / 33 Comments

It was, finally, a busy week at ProEthics—law firms and others are finally paying attention to ethics again after being preoccupied by the #@$%(!! Wuhan virus—so I wasn’t able to cover everything I should have or wanted to.

As always, I’m hoping that the Open Forum participants will make up for my inadequacies.

Please keep comments germane to ethics, civil, and brilliant!

An Ethics Alarms FIRST! Carl Paladino Scores Two Ethics Dunces In A Single Day!

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

I don’t want to leap to conclusions or anything, but I think maybe Mr. Palladino needs to reassess his political ambitions.

Today a recording surfaced of the congressional candidate Ethics Alarms just featured in this Ethics Dunce post telling Buffalo’s WBEN Radio host Peter Hunt on Feb. 13, 2021 that he had recently listened to a broadcast about “Adolf Hitler and how he aroused the crowds.” Palladino continued,

“And he would get up there screaming these epithets and these people were just – they were hypnotized by him. That’s, I guess, I guess that’s the kind of leader we need today. We need somebody inspirational. We need somebody that is a doer, has been there and done it.”

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Ethics Dunce: GOP Congressional Candidate Carl Paladino…Oh Yeah, This Is Just The Kind Of Person Congress Needs

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

Carl Paladino, a Buffalo businessman and former candidate for New York governor now running for Congress as a Republican, re-posted to Facebook a ridiculous conspiracy theory by a fellow idiot claiming that the mass shootings at the supermarket in Buffalo and the school in Uvalde were “false flag” operations. There are screenshots of the since-deleted post, which you can read at your peril.

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A Popeye: I Have To Fisk This Smoking Gun Opinion Piece, Because My Head Will Explode Beyond Repair If I Don’t…[Part I: Why]

/ Jack Marshall / 31 Comments

“It’s all I can stands, ’cause I can’t stands no more!”—Popeye, sailor and American icon.

The column (below) by periodic New York Times opinion writer Wajahat Ali has been bothering me for over a week now. The moment I read it, I wanted to rush to my PC and tear it apart. Then I began questioning the exercise on a cost/benefit basis. Lunatic, hateful, biased pieces like this come out in the mainstream media every day; I can’t, and shouldn’t, use my limited time for Ethics Alarms debunking them all, for to objective, discerning readers, they debunk themselves.

Yet, as Thomas More futilely, fatally and correctly maintained at his trial, silence implies consent. This stuff is poisonous to our society and civil discourse. Moreover, Ali’s bile is especially illustrative of the Left’s current anti-America propaganda: it hits almost every one of the Big Lies, false narratives, hypocrisies distortions and fear-mongering appeals to emotion that threaten to tear the nation apart. It transcends unethical to border on evil. So after having this thing impinge on my sleep for a fifth night—I’m not exaggerating— I have to vivisect this monstrosity, for my own sanity if for no other reason.

Here is the whole essay, which was originally published at the now thoroughly deranged Daily Beast. (There’s hope in this: maybe it was too far off the rails even for the Times.) Read it, please. Its title, flagrant clickbait, is “Is It Time for Me to Leave America?” (Go ahead and read it on Yahoo, where that link takes you.) I’ll be back soon in Part II to take it apart.

You can also read it below….

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