hypocrisy

Unethical Quote of the Week, Sequester Ethics Train Wreck Division: Senior White House Advisor David Plouffe

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

“Watching Woodward the last 2 days is like watching my idol Mike Schmidt face live pitching again. Perfection gained once is rarely repeated.”

–—  Senior White House Advisor David Plouffe, in a tweet contributing to the White House effort to undermine the credibility of journalist Bob Woodward for the crime of calling attention to some of its more unsavory maneuvers regarding the sequestration crisis.

plouffe

“I think you will regret staking out that claim.”

He owes Mike an apology too.

He owes Mike an apology too.

Maybe this is what Gene Sperling meant.  Now the White House gang is suggesting that Woodward has lost it, can’t get around on the fast ball, that his time has passed, that he is, in short, an old geezer who should be put out to pasture, like 1970’s baseball great Mike Schmidt.

Democrats are quick on the trigger to accuse adversaries of coded racism, sexism, and homophobia, but appear to have no compunction at all when it comes to denigrating opponents as old, or fat. This is bigotry, you know, from a White House that has benefited mightily from planting the myth that any criticism of its primary occupant is subject to legitimate suspicion of being motivated by prejudice. Let’s see—Woodward is 68, almost 69. Harry Reid is 74. Nancy Pelosi is 72.  Justice Ginsberg and Justice Breyer, two liberal stalwarts protecting the Presidents legal flanks, are 79 and 74 respectively. Hillary Clinton, who is being pumped up for a Presidential run in 2016, will be 66 this year, and 70 by the time she runs, if she runs.  Joe Biden is older than Woodward; so is newly appointed Secretary of State John Kerry. Plouffe tweet is a slur and a cheap shot, rank hypocrisy, and really stupid.

His message is that if a journalist dares to challenge this administration’s Machiavellian tactics, it must be because of creeping senility. Perfection is, naturally, holding Republican administrations to standards of integrity and honesty. Doing so with Democrats, however, is proof that a journalist has stayed to long at his desk.

He is a bigot, an ass, and I fear, an in-house assassin.

You know, I wouldn’t bet against Mike Schmidt still being able to hit one out.

_____________________________

Source: Instapundit

Influence Peddling At The White House

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

For Sale2

The New York Times—

You know, that Obama-hating, right-wing news rag—

has the story.

I’ll wait here while you read it.

( The key paragraph: “Giving or raising $500,000 or more puts donors on a national advisory board for Mr. Obama’s group and the privilege of attending quarterly meetings with the president, along with other meetings at the White House. Moreover, the new cash demands on Mr. Obama’s top donors and bundlers come as many of them are angling for appointments to administration jobs or ambassadorships.” )

Done?

We can make this short and sweet.

This is unethical.

It reeks of impropriety, influence peddling, and cronyism.

This is similar to the scandal the Clinton White House was embroiled in before Monica distracted everyone.

The bottom line is that the President is allowing his operatives to sell access to him and his office for a half-million dollars a shot. Using the White House, the Lincoln bedroom, positions of influence and substantive access to the President to raise money for anything is unethical, regardless of whether or not there are legal loopholes that allow it to avoid direct illegality. It sets a terrible example for other office holders. It is the epitome of the rotting fish head.

What a cynical and hypocritical disappointment this President has become. Or, perhaps, how shockingly ineffectual he has been in controlling the worst impulses of his staff.

In the end, the results are the same which ever it is.

_____________________________

Facts: New York Times

Now THIS Is Hypocrisy: Jack Lew Edition

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

cayman-islandsI know it pains many of you to hear it, but integrity has not been one of President Obama’s evident virtues, and the nomination of  his Chief of Staff Jack Lew to replace Timothy Geithner as Secretary of the Treasury is a particularly vivid example. The nomination demonstrates either hypocrisy or dishonesty (or both) no matter how one chooses to look at it.

This has nothing to do with Lew’s qualifications for the job: I’m certain he is sufficiently qualified, and is as likely as anyone else to help lead the nation through the fiscal wilderness, which is to say “not very.” The problem with Lew’s nomination, in the context of the President’s integrity, is two-fold. Although Obama and his campaign’s successful strategy was to demonize Mitt Romney as a grasping and venal corporate raider who accumulated big corporate bucks while doing little of value, Jack Lew’s resume includes receiving a $945,000 bonus in January 2009 after a short time working at Citigroup, which was in the process of collapsing financially and seeking (and receiving)a massive taxpayer bailout.  Obama also made hay during the campaign by implying there was something shady about Romney’s investments in Cayman islands-based institutions. Jack Lew. meanwhile, oversaw Cayman island investment funds while at Citigroup. In his 2008 campaign, Obama took special aim at one of them known as Ugland House, and a Senate hearing on the subject designated it as a facilitator of tax evasion. Jack Lew had investments in the Cayman islands, and, like Mitt Romney, had them with Ugland House. Continue reading →

Drone Ethics: The Policy and the Memo

/ Jack Marshall / 68 Comments
Hey, Fox News! INCOMING!!!

Hey, Fox News! INCOMING!!!

With the leak of the Obama Administration’s Justice Department memo laying out  alleged legal and Constitutional justification for targeted drone killings abroad, the ethical debate over this practice finally began in earnest. Back in October of 2011, I visited this topic in a post titled, “The Ethically Messy, Legally Muddled, Drone Killing of Anwar al-Awlaki,” who was an American citizen and also an al-Qaida leader and terrorist, and wrote…

“I am far less confident of a conclusion that the killing was legal than I am that the killing was ethical in a situation where traditional rules and considerations don’t fit the situation well, meaning that decision-makers must go outside the rules to find the right, meaning ethical, course of action.  And I’m even not 100% confident of that.”

This still accurately encompasses my view, although my confidence in the position has declined materially, in part because of the memo. However, my position in 2011 was based on the assumption, using the Bush Administration’s position, that the United States was engaged in a de facto war with al-Qaida, and as a tool of war, killer drones  are within ethical bounds by my analysis. The leaked memo, however, begins with the assumption that the drone strikes are not part of ongoing declared warfare, but rather a new variety of cross-border lethal intervention that has no legitimate statutory basis. I think that under those assumptions, targeting drone killings are illegal, unethical, and to the extent that they give the President of the United States the power to kill someone in any nation based on his assessment that person needs killing, ominous.

I’ll leave the legal analysis of the memo to others. For now, other than pointing readers to my earlier analysis of drone killings in the context of warfare, I just have some observations: Continue reading →

Stop Picking On Mike Tyson

/ Jack Marshall / 29 Comments
This time, it wasn't your fault, Mike.

This time, it wasn’t your fault, Mike.

“Law & Order: SVU” cast former heavyweight boxing champ Mike Tyson as a prisoner and past victim of child abuse victim, who murdered one of his abusers. The episode bombed for the NBC show during the crucial “sweeps” ratings period, and Washington Post TV writer Lisa De Moraes attributes the failure to the show’s insensitivity in casting Tyson.  She wrote in today’s Post,

“Before the episode aired, about 7,000 people signed a petition asking NBC to recast the role. The petition was created by an ardent “SVU” fan who is a rape survivor and who said she felt betrayed by the stunt casting. Among those who signed the petition: “NCIS” star and abuse survivor Pauley Perrette. Tyson was arrested in 1991 and charged with raping then-18-year-old Miss Black America pageant competitor Desiree Washington; he was convicted and served three years of a six-year prison sentence.”

If the “Law and Order” producers erred in casting Tyson, it was in under-estimating the fecklessness, bias and hypocrisy of the viewing public.  Continue reading →

But What If David Gregory Shot the Pitbull?

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments
Illeagl? Well, it depends. Just WHY are you breaking the law? Is it for GOOD or ILL?

Illegal? Well, it depends. Just WHY are you breaking the law? Is it for GOOD or ILL?

Another hybrid ethics tale has surfaced! Cross pitbulls (or whatever a reporter thinks passes for one) with the gun law debate and the District of Columbia’s refusal to bring charges against David Gregory for breaking its gun laws on national television,  and…bada bing! This (From the Washington Post) :

“The bloody paw prints travel the length of a city block, from a Northwest Washington street corner where police said an 11-year-old was mauled by three pit bulls to the welcome mat at the dogs’ owner’s home. Two days after the attack, in which police said all three dogs were fatally shot, the prints were a reminder of what happened at Eighth and Sheridan streets on Sunday afternoon. Police said a neighbor and an officer shot the pit bulls as they sank their teeth into the boy’s legs, arms, stomach and chest…An uncle of the victim’s said the boy was riding a new Huffy dirt bike with orange rims he had gotten for Christmas. The uncle said his nephew emerged from an alley onto Sheridan Street, where he collided with the pit bulls. D.C. police said the unleashed and unattended dogs attacked the boy before a neighbor who saw it went into his home, got his handgun and fired once, hitting one of the dogs. A D.C. police officer on bicycle patrol heard the shots, and authorities said he shot and killed the other two pit bulls…Of the shooters, the 34-year-old uncle said, “They did the right thing.”

“D.C. police said they are reviewing the incident and have left open the possibility that the neighbor could be charged with violating the District’s gun laws. A police spokesman would not say whether the gun was legally registered. Even if it was, using it on a D.C. street is illegal…”

Some Post readers were appalled that such a heroic action could result in prosecution. Wrote one, indignantly:

“That prosecutors would even consider bringing gun charges against the Northwest D.C. resident who saved an 11-year-old’s life by shooting one of three pit bulls that were brutally mauling the child speaks volumes about the mindless absurdity of the city’s gun laws, to say nothing of the zealous anti-gun sentiment that more broadly permeates officials’ thinking here…If the good Samaritan who acted quickly in this case to save a child possessed his gun unlawfully, police and prosecutors should by all means confiscate it. But contemplating further charges against him is as unconscionable as it is ridiculous.”

No, what’s ridiculous is to have gun laws that are enforced according to the policy that if a citizen does a good thing with his illegal gun, then it’s fine; only bad acts with guns will result in prosecutions. Continue reading →

What Al Should Have Said

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

I have no illusions about Al Gore, but he will always occupy a warm place in my heart.

Gore

My first run-in with Al Gore was long ago. I had taken over the president’s job at a struggling national health promotion organization, and Sen. Gore was our angel in Congress. Health care screening was his mission back then, and he opened doors to sponsors, allies and funding around the country. Then, one day, he stopped answering our phone calls. We were curtly told that Sen. Gore was no longer the Herald of Preventive Health Care. Now he was the guru of something called “the information super-highway,” and we would have to fend for ourselves. (The organization went belly-up a year later). Thus I learned that Gore was nothing if not opportunistic, and perhaps not the guy you would want to be in a World War II foxhole with if he spoke fluent German.

Still, I can’t imagine how hard it must be to be the unlucky loser of the highest office in the land in one the nation’s rare popular vote/electoral vote splits, and I admire the fact that Al’s not in a rubber room by now. I thought his concession speech in 2000 was one of the high-points of political nobility during my lifetime, and the  Saturday Night Live appearance that was Gore’s farewell to politics will always stand as one of the bravest, quirkiest, saddest, funniest, most fascinating public breast-barings in media history. Al is a phony, and an opportunist, and I wouldn’t trust him as far as I could throw him, but he’s lived out a roller-coaster life in the hot lights of center stage, and I’m not certain I could do it any better. Continue reading →

New Mexico Abortion Wars: Yes, It’s A Terrible Law, But Not A Terribly Unethical One

/ Jack Marshall / 50 Comments
Paving the road to hell? New Mexico lawmaker Cathrynn Brown

Paving the road to hell? New Mexico lawmaker Cathrynn Brown

My friend (and Ethics Alarms Ethics Blogger of the Year) Rick Jones went full-Django on New Mexico State Legislator  Cathrynn Brown for her proposed, now withdrawn, measure forbidding women who are pregnant as the result of incest or rape from getting an abortion on the theory that it constitutes “destruction of evidence.” The attempt launched Rick into rare form:

“Every once in a while someone mixes up a cocktail of such mind-melting stupidity, monumental inconsistency, and transcendent arrogance that there is little for the rest of us to do but drop everything and gaze in slack-jawed wonderment at the inanity before us. Behold, therefore, one Cathrynn Brown (right), a New Mexico legislator whose latest bill rockets off the scale, leaving “moronic” and “horrific” as feeble understatements of the idiocy involved.”

Whoa, Nelly!

Let’s calm ourselves and consider, shall we? Continue reading →

Bizarro World Ethics in North Carolina

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments
bizarro_world

Also known as “North Carolina”…

The Bizarro planet, occasionally mentioned on “Seinfeld,” was a humorous feature in Superman comics, a cube-shaped planet populated by flawed clones of Superman and Lois Lane. Nothing made sense on the Bizaaro world, since its denizens were sub-cretinous, their traditions absurd, and their logic inverted. They threw away food and ate the plates—that sort of thing, hilarious if you’re a nine-year old boy in 1962.

I sometimes refer to “Bizarro World ethics,” which invokes the principle that it is difficult, if not impossible, to be ethical in a culture where a lack of ethics is the norm, just as behaving normally with Bizarro Supie and Bizarro Lois would be rude and confusing to them. This is the dilemma facing North Carolina, which is apparently trying to devise an ethical way to run a state lottery. That is a hopeless goal. It is like insisting on clean mud-wrestling, non-violent Jason Statham films, or healthy junk food. State-run lotteries are by definition unethical. The states that run them, and almost all do, have traded principle for encouraging and endorsing activities they once declared harmful and criminal, as a cowardly way to acquire revenue without paying the political price of raising taxes.

By doing this, they… Continue reading →

Hollywood’s Ridiculous Hypocrisy on Guns

/ Jack Marshall / 36 Comments
"Say hello to my little friend! And while we're on the topic of guns, don't you think it's time to be sensible about gun control?"

“Say hello to my little friend! And while we’re on the topic of guns, don’t you think it’s time to be sensible about gun control?”

In a move stunningly unconscious to outrageous hypocrisy, the group “Mayors Against Illegal Guns” have posted a video on on its website and Youtube (of course), featuring an impressive array of solemn Hollywood celebrities chiding Americans for not doing something about guns “yesterday” and to “demand a plan” to end gun violence. The problem? Many of these same celebrities owe their presence on the video to Hollywood’s obsession with gun violence, without which they would be just anonymous pretty faces. They owe their mansions and private planes to that gun violence too, which they have happily, willfully and lucratively acted out in scores of violent films and television shows. How can they presume, given how they make their living, to lecture anyone on the topic of guns?

I have some theories. Many of them are dumb as bricks. Most of them are automatic co-signers of the manifesto for any cause branded as liberal, the Hollywood religion,and don’t bother to think about whether it is consistent with their life choices or not. Probably all of them, working every day in one of the most ethics-free, cut-throat, dishonest and hypocritical sub-cultures that has ever existed in the United States are completely numb to the concept of hypocrisy, as apparently are the mayors, who work in the culture of politics, which is only somewhat better. Continue reading →