ignorance

Ethics Dunce: The Maryland State Bar Association

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

Do you know what legal ethics opinions are? Many lawyers don’t know, or barely pay attention to them, but the opinions are important. They are written when bar associations have to decide how to handle the gray areas of professional ethics, and believe me, there are more gray areas in legal ethics than the profession likes to admit. Some jurisdictions churn out lots of important and useful legal ethics opinions all year long; others barely bother with them. (Idaho simply stopped issuing such opinions decades ago.) Still, the LEOs, as they are called, are essential when one of the many legal ethics issues crop up that a jurisdiction’s rules themselves don’t cover.

Although bar associations do a terrible job making their legal ethics opinions’ availability known to the general public, LEOs have invaluable information to convey about how lawyers are ethically obligated to serve their clients. They are also essential if people like me are going to be able to remind Maryland’s lawyers about their ethical duties as part of continuing legal education seminars and expert opinions.

So why is it that Maryland, alone among the 51 U.S. jurisdictions, refuses to allow the public access to their legal ethics opinions? All right, neither does Arkansas, but nobody can read in ArkansasKIDDING!!! I’M KIDDING!

In order to find out what the Bar Association has decided regarding specific legal ethics conundrums, or whether the state has any position at all, one has to be a dues-paying member of the Maryland Bar. Never mind that Maryland lawyers, who, like most lawyers, often are subject to the ethics rules of other jurisdictions, can access neighboring bar association LEO’s with a couple of clicks on their computers. Never mind fairness or reciprocity.

Here’s how the question “Why do we hide our ethics opinions?” was answered by one Maryland lawyer online:

“Ethics opinions are MSBA work product: a benefit to members who pay their dues…An ethics opinion is a legal opinion about what it or is not permissible under the rules. If you want legal advice, pay for it. The “rules”, by the way, are published and are available to the public. As are the elements of negligence. Do you tell your clients for free how to prove their negligence cases?”

How’s that for a venal, snotty answer? In fact, there are no “hidden” laws or principles related to negligence, nor are the standards for what constitutes negligence and how it is proven in court only available for a fee. The legal ethics opinions, on the other hand, may be crucial to allowing non-lawyers  know when they are being victimized by unethical members of the Maryland bar. How convenient that the Bar hides these from the view of the group of citizens that have the most urgent need to know about them.

Continue reading →

From The Ethics Alarms Cultural Illiteracy Files: “A Streetcar Naked Desire”

/ Jack Marshall / 43 Comments

On Wheel of Fortune, an unfortunate contestant named Kevin was confronted with the board above, and had only to name the missing letter to collect his prize.

He guessed “K.”

1.  It is fair to say that he had never heard of the Tennessee Williams drama, easily one of the top ten plays in the classic American theatrical canon.

2. Does this amazing gap in Kevin’s basic education prove that American schools are failing our children and society? No. It shouldn’t fill us with confidence, either.

3. What else does this mean Kevin has never heard of? “Stella!!!”?  Brando? Elia Kazan? The House Un-American Activities Committee? Naming names? Guilt by association? “I have always depended on the kindness of strangers”? “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof’?

4. What does it say about U.S. society that someone this ignorant of basic culture feels confident going on a nationally televised game show? I think it suggests that not only are too many people ignorant and uneducated, they don’t even know how ignorant and uneducated they are.  Worse yet, it may mean that such people don’t think that there is anything wrong with being ignorant and uneducated.

5. Though Kevin is being widely mocked on social media, I bet there are more adults who wouldn’t be able to solve the puzzle that we would like to think.

6. This is why I started a professional theater company dedicated to producing great American plays that theater companies didn’t produce any more. “A Streetcar Named Desire,” however, was on the list of plays so common, so frequently taught in schools and so well-known that we would never mount them.

Oops.

[I’m still sick, by the way, and have been sleeping most of the day. This story made me sicker.]

The Destruction Of Doug Adler : Guerillas, Gorillas, ESPN And The First Niggardly Principle

/ Jack Marshall / 49 Comments

The Niggardly Principles apply to situations where a hyper-sensitive and ignorant individual takes an innocent statement as a slur because the individual doesn’t understand its meaning or context.  These are all unforgivable scenarios that reward the foolish and punish the innocent (and articulate). They include the infamous episode in the District of Columbia government when a white executive was disciplined for using the word “niggardly,” ; the time the Los Angeles NAACP attacked Hallmark for an outer space themed “talking greeting card”  that mentioned “black holes,” which the hair-trigger offended (and science education-deprived) heard as “black ‘ho’s.”

Then there were the students at  at Lebanon Valley College in Pennsylvania,  who demanded that the college rename “Lynch Memorial Hall,” named for Dr. Clyde A. Lynch, the LVC’s president during the Depression, because his name evoked lynchings to their tender ears. And who can forget, as much as one would like to, when ESPN suspended sportscaster Max Bretos after an Asian-American activist group complained that he had used the term “a chink in his armor” while talking about an NBA player of Chinese heritage ?

This story is worse than any of them.

ESPN sports announcer Doug Adler was calling an Australian Open tennis match last month between Venus Williams  and Stefanie Voegele when he said,”You see Venus move in and put the guerilla effect on. Charging.” “Guerilla tennis” is a recognized phrase that refers to aggressive tennis. It has nothing to do with Great Apes.

New York Times tennis writer Ben Rothenberg, however, cued by some Twitter social justice warriors, attacked Adler, tweeting himself,

“This is some appalling stuff. Horrifying that the Williams sisters remain subjected to it still in 2017.”

Continue reading →

And Democrats Will Call This “Success.”

/ Jack Marshall / 26 Comments

The GenForward poll, as reported by The Associated Press found that a majority of young adults, 57 %, regard Donald Trump as an illegitimate President. The number includes three-quarters of black respondents as well as large majorities of Hispanics and Asians.

President Trump is many things. Ethics Alarms began years ago documenting those aspects of his abilities, temperament, skills and character that made him, by the analysis here, an unqualified, undesirable President. One thing that he is not, however, is “illegitimate.” There is no basis whatsoever to consider him so. He was selected to run by the process put in place by the Republican Party, over a large number of experienced and accomplished politicians (and then there was Ben Carson.) He was extensively covered by a hostile press, that all but announced (and in the case of the New York Times, did announce) that it was dedicated to his defeat. His opponent was the allegedly unbeatable, anointed heir to Barack Obama and the previous Democratic President, her husband, both of whose policies were a matter of record. President Trump did not “buy the election,” as he spent about half what his opponent did. Illegal voters, to whatever extent they played a part in the election, probably did not vote for him.

Donald Trump was elected because the right number of voters chose him in the right combination of states, and under the rules in place since the U.S. Constitution was ratified, his was a legitimate election, and he is a legitimate President beyond question. There have been a few Presidents whose legitimacy could be challenged—John Quincy Adams, John Tyler, Rutherford B. Hayes—but not President Donald J. Trump.

So why does a majority of young Americans now regard the President of the United States as “illegitimate”? They believe this because a deliberate strategy has been followed by Democrats, progressives and the news media to make them believe that. They have been told that the Electoral College is undemocratic, as part of a two month long onslaught of propaganda to get a group of electors not chosen for the purpose to overturn the election results. Major figures in the Democratic leadership have declared the President “illegitimate,” without official rebuke. Most of the Congressional Black Caucus boycotted the Inauguration on that basis. Democrats have loudly claimed that an FBI conspiracy was afoot to wreck Hillary Clinton’s campaign, and then attributed her loss to Russian “interference.” Finally, Democrats have claimed that the Trump campaign colluded with the Russians to steal the election, essentially alleging treason. This last is the major artillery in the Delegitimize Trump battle plan, and it has always been intellectually dishonest, irresponsible, and reckless. Following on the theme, Democrats have even encouraged the use of the inflammatory term “the resistance” to sanctify those who claim the President is “illegitimate,” equating opposition to a duly, legally elected U.S. President with the underground French resistance to Nazi occupiers during World War II, a genuinely illegitimate government. This is indefensible and wrong. Continue reading →

I Can’t Resist: Another Restaurant Ethics Tale

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

I’m sitting here in my office waiting for an important call from a potential client, so I don’t want to start a major post (as in “Trump’s Wiretapping Accusation”), so I’ll just note this strange episode from last night.

It was along day for ProEthics, so Grace and I decided to order out from a terrific Mediterranean place that delivers. We love their fattoosh, which is a salad that includes little pieces of dried pita bread. That was an item in the order.

When everything arrived, the fattoosh was missing the little pita bits. Now, this had happened once before, but I didn’t bother to make a big deal out of it. Still, fattoosh without the pita isn’t fattoosh. Now it had happened  again, making it 40% of the times we had ordered the dish that it was incomplete. I decided to call up and complain.

The owner said that I was right, but that the selection in the menu doesn’t specifically list the pita as an ingredient. Sometimes, he said, people don’t know what fattoosh is, and complain that is does have the pita bits.

Yes, I said, but fattoosh without the pita is just a salad.  To wit:

Fattoush (Arabic: فتوش‎‎, also fattush, fatush, fattoosh, and fattouche) is a Levantine bread salad made from toasted or fried pieces of pita bread (khubz ‘arabi) combined with mixed greens and other vegetables, such as radishes and tomatoes.

“Right! Right!” he said, “But people who don’t know that complain. So sometimes we leave the pita out. Sometimes we put it in.”

“You do know that if the menu says fattoosh, and fattoosh means “salad with pieces of pita bread in it,” you don’t have to specify that the pita is included?” I queried.  ” The name says that it’s included. Are you telling me that if I want fattoosh, I have to make a point of saying that I really want fattoosh?”

That’s right, he said.

I could not make the man see that there was anything wrong with this.

Shaun King: Activist Ignoramus

/ Jack Marshall / 49 Comments

Deep thoughts from Shaun King…

Activists who have neither knowledge nor understanding of the government, the Constitution, civics and basic political realities should be accorded no respect, attention or influence. Since their pronouncements and assertions are based on bad information and misconceptions (and perhaps stupidity), who cares what they think about an issue? The news media should ignore them; politicians should ignore them; everyone should ignore them. Well, except to mock them. They deserved to be mocked.

This brings us to Shaun King, the Black Lives Matter activist and writer—and the fact that someone as ignorant as King can make a living as a writer is disturbing in itself.  He is on the staff of The New York Daily News as the “senior justice writer.” I’ll remind you of this later.

King just delivered his signature significance self-exposé via his favorite mode of communication, social media, in this case, Twitter. This means that many thousands of his followers, as well as the news media, now have incontrovertible evidence to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that he knows less about the country he lives in and its government than we should expect from a 7th grader.

Behold!

Yesterday, King announced on Twitter what he called “serious but wild” questions. Sit down for this. I mean it.

His first:

1. Can the people of the United States somehow hold a vote now, or next year, to oust Donald Trump? Like a recall of some sort?

His second…

In laymen’s terms, what would it take for the USA to pass a Constitutional Amendment for a President Recall like CA has for a Governor?

Uh oh…I was afraid of this…

There goes the head…

Continue reading →

Unethical Website Of The Month: Reality Dive

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments
The Pitbull is amused. He's a good sport.

The Pitbull is amused. He’s a good sport.

One should know that this is a really incompetent website. The title can be read multiple ways, one of which is self-indicting (and as it happens, accurate). The motto is just stupid: “The Truth As It Was Meant To be Heard.” Funny, I didn’t hear anything. And what I read wasn’t true.

I kept seeing a featured link to the Reality Dive’s slideshow, “The Most Incredibly Dangerous Dogs” on legitimate sites that should know better. Ethics Tip to these “sponsoring” sites: posting links to low-life outposts like Reality Dive undermines trust in your own site. You’re vouching for this crap.

I will remember.

Finally, I had to click. Sure enough, the title advertised was clickbait, aka a lie. The feature wasn’t even titled “The Most Incredibly Dangerous Dogs.” It was titled “Most Dangerous Dog Breeds” ( Most Dangerous Dog Breeds what?) The text of this mess indicated, if one thought about it, that the most dangerous dog breeds aren’t dangerous at all. Even that doesn’t plumb the sheer incompetence and misrepresentation on display in the slide show.

But first, a comment.  Many people, an amazing number, are stone ignorant about dogs. Never mind that dogs are all around us, work for us, play with amuse us, love us, help us, make us laugh and protect us, there are millions and millions of people who, out of phobias, traumas, negligent upbringing or just inattention, go through life regarding dogs as mysterious, sinister, untrustworthy, hairy noisy drooling things with sharp teeth to be feared and avoided. I feel sorry for them, but as with all ignorant people, I don’t feel too sorry. This condition is fixable, curable, but most of these dog-dummies choose instead to infect others with their malady, which is communicable. Worst of all are The Smugly Ignorant Who Think They Are Not, who actively work to create more people like them. I flagged one of the vile offspring of such Typhoid Marys of dog-hate in an earlier Unethical Website, Dogsbite.org.

Whether features like “Neat Pictures Of Dogs Pulled From The Internet With Meandering And Mostly False Text That Supposedly Explains Why They Are Dangerous But Doesn’t Because The Slideshow Was Created And Authored By a 16-Year-Old Intern From Madam Louisa’s Home For The Bewildered”—okay, that’s what it should have been called—are more or less ethical than the canine-breedists whose propaganda kills thousands of innocent animals every year is a good question. Reality Dives doesn’t care about dogs, one way or the other, just clicks. It assigned this feature to someone whom I seriously question whether he or she could tell a dog from writing desk. Nevertheless, these posts spread ignorance and fear, and set up people to think like the creators of Dogsbite.org.

Now let’s examine the slideshow a bit.

Numero Uno of the “dangerous breeds” is, you guessed it, the American Pit Bull Terrier. The writer  picked the most sinister picture he could find of the breed once called “The Nanny Dog” for its wonderful way with kids (still true, you know):

pitbull-1

 

I found the site he took it from: interestingly, it is a website that celebrates what great dogs these are. This picture on that site also could have been used, but that wouldn’t support the “narrative’: Continue reading →

In Which Your Host Decides To Defenestrate A Trending Facebook Screed…

/ Jack Marshall / 44 Comments

facebook-logo-810x400

Yesterday, I spied on Facebook an obnoxious bit of anti-conservative hostility that I hoped was an aberration. It wasn’t. I resolved to post an emphatic rebuke the next time one of my friends posted it, and the opportunity arrived quickly. Here is the original screed:

A DAY IN THE LIFE OF JOE CONSERVATIVE

Joe gets up at 6AM and fills his coffeepot with water to prepare his morning coffee. The water is clean and good because some tree-hugging liberal fought for minimum water-quality standards.With his first swallow of coffee, he takes his daily medication. His medications are safe to take because some stupid commie liberal fought to insure their safety and that they work as advertised. All but $10 of his medications are paid for by his employer’s medical plan because some liberal union workers fought their employers for paid medical insurance – now Joe gets it too.

He prepares his morning breakfast of bacon and eggs. Joe’s bacon is safe to eat because some girly-man liberal fought for laws to regulate the meat packing industry. In the morning shower, Joe reaches for his shampoo. His bottle is properly labeled with each ingredient and its amount in the total contents because some crybaby liberal fought for his right to know what he was putting on his body and how much it contained.

Joe dresses, walks outside, and takes a deep breath. The air he breathes is clean because some environmentalist wacko liberal fought for laws to stop industries from polluting our air.
He walks to the subway station for his government-subsidized ride to work. It saves him considerable money in parking and transportation fees because some fancy-pants liberal fought for affordable public transportation, which gives everyone the opportunity to be a contributor. Joe begins his work day. He has a good job with excellent pay, medical benefits, retirement, paid holidays, and vacation because some lazy liberal union members fought and died for these working standards. Joe’s employer pays these standards because Joe’s employer doesn’t want his employees to call the union. If Joe is hurt on the job or becomes unemployed, he’ll get a worker compensation or unemployment check because some stupid liberal didn’t think he should lose his home because of his temporary misfortune.

It’s noontime and Joe needs to make a bank deposit so he can pay some bills. Joe’s deposit is federally insured by the FDIC because some godless liberal wanted to protect Joe’s money from unscrupulous bankers who ruined the banking system before the Great Depression and AGAIN under Republican Rule in The 2000’s Joe has to pay his Fannie Mae-underwritten mortgage and his below-market federal student loan because some elitist liberal decided that Joe and the government would be better off if he was educated and earned more money over his lifetime.

Joe is home from work. He plans to visit his father this evening at his farm home in the country. He gets in his car for the drive. His car is among the safest in the world because some America-hating liberal fought for car safety standards. He arrives to his boyhood home. His was the third generation to live in the house financed by Farmers’ Home Administration because bankers didn’t want to make rural loans. The house didn’t have electricity until some big-government liberal stuck his nose where it didn’t belong and demanded rural electrification.

He is happy to see his father, who is now retired. His father lives on Social Security (an Earned Income Credit btw NOT an entitlement!) and a union pension because some wine-drinking, cheese-eating liberal made sure he could take care of himself so Joe wouldn’t have to.

Joe gets back in his car for the ride home, and turns on a radio talk show. The radio host keeps saying that liberals are bad and conservatives are good. He doesn’t mention that the beloved Republicans have fought against every protection and benefit Joe enjoys throughout his day.

Joe agrees: “We don’t need those big-government liberals ruining our lives! After all, I’m a self-made man who believes everyone should take care of themselves, just like I have!”

COPY and PASTE if you wish to share.

This was, of course, followed by the usual chorus of seals barking and clapping, which many likes and loves.

Now, I could have, had I chosen to waste an incredible amount of time de-bunking a load of lazy, unresearched garbage  that anyone not already so biased and smugly satisfied with  their inadequate education in history and logic would immediately recognize as such, written a definitive and thorough flaming of this monstrosity. But I have promises to keep and miles to go before I sleep, and the rantings of some pimply OccupyDemocrats hack just isn’t worth it. Thus I spent about ten minutes on refreshing myself regarding some details of what I already knew, and another eight or so composing this, which I have now used to reply to three Facebook Friends. I have also posted it on my own page.

I now post it here for Ethics Alarms readers who may encounter “Joe.” As I said, I could do much, much better, and be much, much more emphatic, but this particular gnat requires only a slap or two…

…not a bazooka. But feel free to adapt  and enhance what follows yourself yourself, and post it as needed: Continue reading →

Two Unethical And Unconstitutional Laws On Guns, One From The Right, One From the Left, Bite The Dust. Good.

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

guns4

I.

As last year’s flat-out demagoguery about banning gun ownership for citizens placed on the FBI’s no-fly list proved, Democrats will never let the Constitution get in the way of an emotion-based attack on gun rights. A rule  implemented by former President Obama after the 2012 Sandy Hook shooting (“WE HAVE TO DO SOMETHING!!!”) would have required the Social Security Administration to report the records of some mentally ill beneficiaries to the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System. Those who have been deemed mentally incapable of managing their financial affairs — roughly 75,000 people — would have then been prevented from owning guns.

The American Civil Liberties Union and advocates for the disabled opposed the restriction, which was so broadly drawn that an Asperger’s sufferer could have his Second amendment rights taken away. And what, exactly, is the link between not being able to handle one’s financial affairs and violence? Hell, I can barely handle my financial affairs.

By a 57-43 margin, the Republican-led Senate voted last week  to repeal the measure, and it now heads to the White House for President Trump’s signature.

Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley, a leading Republican critic of the rule, said that it was filled with “vague characteristics that do not fit into the federal mentally defective standard” that could legally prohibit someone from buying or owning a gun. “If a specific individual is likely to be violent due to the nature of their mental illness, then the government should have to prove it,” Grassley said

Sen. Chris Murphy, a Democrat from Connecticut where the Sandy Hook massacre occurred, and thus obligated to grandstand regardless of the fact that he’s on shaky 2nd Amendment, 5th  Amendment and also Equal Protection  ground, declaimed on the Senate floor,

“The [Congressional Review Act] we have before us today will make it harder for the federal government to do what we have told them to do for decades, which is to put dangerous people and people who are seriously mentally ill on the list of people who are prohibited from buying a gun….If you can’t manage your own financial affairs, how can we expect that you’re going to be a responsible steward of a dangerous, lethal firearm?”

Well, I guess nobody in Congress should own a gun either, right, Senator? Continue reading →

Ethics Observations On The Impeachment Poll

/ Jack Marshall / 25 Comments

johnson-impeachment

Public Policy Polling reported yesterday that…

“Just three weeks into his administration, voters are already evenly divided on the issue of impeaching Trump with 46% in favor and 46% opposed. Support for impeaching Trump has crept up from 35% 2 weeks ago, to 40% last week, to its 46% standing this week. While Clinton voters initially only supported Trump’s impeachment 65/14, after seeing him in office over the last few weeks that’s gone up already to 83/6.”

What’s going on here?

Ethics Observations:

1. The article buries the lede. What has changed is that Clinton voters now want the President to be impeached by an incredible 83-6 margin. Good job, news media! Well done, Democrats! Nice well-poisoning, social media! Now, if the poll is to be believed, virtually all of the 65,844,610 voters who supported Clinton have adopted the Left’s favored totalitarian mode of governance: if our candidate loses the election, gain power through other means.

2. This has been the relentless message wafting in from the Left  like Assad’s poison gas since November 8, 2016, when “The World Turned Upside-Down.” The popular vote should decide the election…Electors should violate their pledges…Trump should be impeached before he takes office…He should be stopped from taking the oath until he sells all of his business interests—Russia “hacked the election,” we should have a do-over…His cabinet should declare him “unable to discharge the duties of the Presidency,” and make Pence President…the military should take over…He should be arrested…He should be shot…Rioters should prevent the Inauguration from occurring…Did I miss any? I’m sure I must have. But now it has come back to impeachment.

3. Impeachment has been the default remedy of radicals, fanatics and crazies who oppose Presidents since at least the 1950s, when the John Birch Society was running amuck. Democrats, having once taken their name seriously and genuinely supported, you know, democracy, used to regard it as dangerous device that could be used to take power away without the inconvenience of elections. John F. Kennedy won a Pulitzer Prize for putting his name on a pop history book called “Profiles in Courage” (he didn’t write it) about heroic U.S. Senators, and one of the most stirring tales was the book’s recounting the story of Edmund Ross, Republican Senator from Kansas, who bucked his party leadership and his constituents by voting for President Andrew Johnson’s acquittal in his impeachment trial, thus causing the effort to throw Johnson out of office to fail by a single vote. Kennedy’s book stated that Ross, whose career in Kansas was ended by the vote (he later switched parties and moved to New Mexico), may well have saved the balance of powers and the integrity of the the democratic process. Johnson was an unpopular and obstructive President who stood in the way of the Radical Republicans’ plans to subjugate the defeated Confederacy, but his “high crimes” consisted of using his power in politically unpopular ways.

4. The Democrats carried on Ross’s tradition when they refused to give Bill Clinton’s impeachment a fair trial, and he had engaged in impeachable offenses. That didn’t mean that it would have been good for the country to remove Clinton from office, however, especially since the Republican Party had been openly searching for ways to undermine Clinton since he was elected. The impeachment was an example of something justifiable done for unethical reasons, thus setting, again, a dangerous precedent. Impeachment has to be a last resort when a President’s conduct abuses law and power, as it would have been if Nixon hadn’t resigned. Any other use of the device will allow elections to be overturned whenever a President’s opposition gets sufficient popular support and representation. Continue reading →