Mitt Romney

Liar, Liar, Volt on Fire

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

Not a hotcake. Definitely selling like a hotcake.

There are times when I miss the David Manning Liar of the Month, a regular feature on my old Ethics Scoreboard reserved for flagging a breed of lie that I find the most annoying of all. These are the lies that even the liars know are unbelievable from the moment the dishonest statements leave their mouths. Then, when they are inevitably caught, the liars argue that the lie wasn’t really a lie because nobody believed it in the first place. Such lies tell us that the liar doesn’t think lying is anything to be ashamed of. Beware such people, especially when they dwell in high places. The lie may be trivial, but the attitude toward lying is not.

Spared the indignity of being a David Manning Liar by the Scoreboard’s dormant state is Rep. John Dingell, a Michigan Democrat, who took umbrage at Mitt Romney’s statement that the Chevy Volt was “and idea whose time has not come.” Dingell protested, isssuing a press release that said, Continue reading →

The Romney and Paul Smears: Time For U.S. News Media To Admit Its Bias And Address It

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

"Mitt Romney is the one in the middle. Or so we're told. Seems plausible to us."

Although the left-leaning bias of the majority of the news media is frighteningly/absurdly/amusingly/frustratingly obvious (depending on your point of view) every single day, the standard response to complaints remains, 1) “What about Fox?” and 2) “Bias? What bias?”  The latter response, if not proof of dishonesty or pathological denial, is one of the symptoms of the problem: the mainstream media is so used to being biased that bias is now the status quo.

There has been plenty of evidence in 2011, however, that the problem is getting worse, and both the public and self-government are being badly served as a result. Recently there was another flutter of statements from pundits and others, like Bill Clinton, that the media obviously favored Obama over Hillary Clinton in the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination battle. Of course it did. That the media then went on to outrageously tilt its coverage in Obama’s favor durin the campaign for the general election is hardly capable of contradiction: Obama was on more magazine covers, got more video time, received more consistently hagiographic stories, his questionably-qualified running mate was barely criticized while the press couldn’t attack McCain’s enough…in short, it was a disgraceful abdication of professional duty. How can journalists decry the influence of Super-PACs and big money in elections when the news media, the most powerful communications factor of all ( because it has—still—the remains of a reputation for being objective, fair and accurate) is consistently biased? Not only is that a bigger problem, it is one journalists themselves have the power to fix…if they wanted to, if they cared. Continue reading →

Ethics Alarms Awards: The Sioux City GOP Candidates Debate

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

What do Mitt Romney, Ron Paul and Newt Gingrich have in common with "Blazing Saddles'" Gabby Johnson?

There were ethics revelations, lessons and cautionary tales in last night’s final debate before the Iowa Caucuses. The envelopes, please!

The Boy Who Cried Wolf Award

Winner: Rep. Michelle Bachmann

Bachmann  twice protested that she was constantly being accused of not having her facts right, when she really did. This is a hard lesson for people like Bachmann, but she might as well learn it now: when you habitually make factual errors and then deny that you made them, people aren’t going to trust you to be responsible with your claims or to be telling the truth. Nobody has spun as many whoppers and jaw-droppers as Bachmann in the last year, and nobody has more consistently tried to deny the truth when her misrepresentations were brought to her attention. Or to put it another way: once a candidate has claimed that 6th President John Quincy Adams, who was all of 8-years-old when the Declaration of Independence was signed, qualifies as “Founding Father,” nobody is going to credit your representation of “facts” whether they are accurate or not.

The Gabby Johnson Award

Winners (tie): Newt Gingrich, Mitt Romney, Rep. Ron Paul Continue reading →

Trump Follies Integrity Test: The Grades Are In!

/ Jack Marshall / Leave a comment

Today Rick Perry and Michele Bachmann  declined the invitation to participate in the NewsMax debate, moderated by Donald Trump. All the GOP Presidential contenders have now responded to the opportunity accept some television exposure in exchange for playing pawns in Donald Trump’s tawdry manipulation of the media, public attention and the political process for personal promotion purposes.

The Ethics Alarms grades are in for this integrity test,  based on rapidity in assessing the revolting nature of the exercise, clarity in condemning it, and personal integrity demonstrated by the handling of the whole embarrassing stunt.

Here they are:

A:  Jon Huntsman and Ron Paul get the highest grades for declining quickly and for the right stated reason—Trump.

C+: Mitt Romney was the third to  decline, but also told Trump it was for scheduling reasons, losing points for weasel words, or, in the alternative, really not objecting to The Donald. As usual, who knows what Romney really believes?

D : Perry and Bachmann, for waiting until they knew who else was debating. Perry used the same excuse as Romney, and Bachmann declined “respectfully.” That loses points: Trump doesn’t deserve any respect.

D-: Rick Santorum. OK, he should flunk, but he’s desperate, and only a debate with nobody else at it would give him a chance to stand out. He couldn’t resist temptation. I sympathize.

F: Newt. He has no excuses. Or integrity.

Ethics Dunce: Wall Street Journal Blogger James Taranto

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

Useful fact: Mitt Romney is running for President, and Maureen Dowd isn't. You can't use her to judge his ethics, just as you shouldn't use him to judge her hair.

Oh James, James. What am I going to do with you? For the third time this year you have barged into Ethics Dunce territory, surely a place one of the most consistently perceptive, witty and reasonable of conservative commentators never belongs.

But what is an ethicist to do when you attempt to trivialize an outrageously dishonest and misleading campaign ad by Mitt Romney, in which a statement by President Obama [ “Sen. McCain’s campaign actually said, and I quote: ‘If we keep talking about the economy, we’re going to lose,’ “referring to the 2008 economy under Bush ] is edited to suggest something completely different [ “If we keep talking about the economy, we’re going to lose,” implying that “we’ means the Democrats] from what he was really saying, by showing that other politicians and New York Times columnists play the same unethical game? So what? How do the unethical journalistic practices of the Times columnists you deftly expose on a regular basis in any way make Romney’s ad less reprehensible? Continue reading →

Most Troubling Comment During The GOP Debate: Mitt Romney

/ Jack Marshall / 37 Comments

The runner-up in this category, as I have come to expect, was Michelle Bachmann’s…

“The president, he put us in Libya. He is now putting us in Africa.”

If any other candidate, or President Obama, had said this, no one would blink: an innocent misstatement, obviously. With Bachmann, however, and her record of historical and factual howlers, one has to pause. Does the Congresswoman really not know that Libya is in Africa? After all, a large portion of Americans don’t. It is not unfair to judge Bachmann’s comment in the context of our general impression of her knowledge and precision of expression, but avoiding confirmation bias is almost impossible. If you think Bachmann’s a dolt, then the gaffe is just more proof. If you admire and respect her, you ignore the mistake (we know what she means, after all) and the criticism confirms that everyone is predisposed to be unfair to your candidate. I will say this: Bachmann is at fault for eroding her credibility to the point that a statement like this raises any doubts at all. I am inclined to give her the benefit of the doubt, but the doubt is there, nonetheless.

The winning entry in the debate, revealing a disturbing ethical orientation in a spontaneous remark, was Mitt Romney’s comment in the midst of objecting to Gov. Perry’s allegation about Romney’s hypocrisy in criticizing Perry’s record on illegal immigration after employing illegals himself: Continue reading →

Gov. Perry, Social Security, and Condemning the Truth

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

He speaks the truth! STONE HIM!!!!

In the Bizarro World that is American politics, Gov. Rick Perry was deemed to have stumbled not at all when he spoke of his skepticism about evolution, because a depressing number of Americans are cheered by the delusion that humans were created in a god-like image 10,000 years ago, despite all evidence to the contrary. But Perry is now seen as making a possibly fatal blunder in his presidential aspirations by telling the truth. Stranger yet, the truth Perry told is an essential one that must be acknowledged to address America’s financial ills, and identifying problems is what leaders are supposed to do. Never mind. People don’t want to believe it, so speaking this truth is “wrong.”

The statement Perry made that has Republicans, Democrats and the media in a dither is that Social Security is a Ponzi scheme. Continue reading →

Ethics Hero: Rep. Ron Paul

/ Jack Marshall / 24 Comments

One of the benefits of absolutist ethical systems is that they can force you to maintain your integrity when unethical positions are convenient or temporarily beneficial. So it was that libertarian Rep. Ron Paul (R-Tx) emerged from Monday’s New Hampshire debate among GOP Presidential hopefuls as the only candidate who rejected limiting the participation of gays in the military and the infamous “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” policy. While Herman Cain, Michele Bachmann, Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum (naturally), Newt Gingrich and Tim Pawlenty all said, in various and convoluted ways, that they supported DADT, Paul cut precisely to what is ethically offensive about the policy.

“We have to remember, rights don’t come in groups,” Paul said. “We shouldn’t have gay rights. Rights come as individuals….it would be behavior that would count, not the person who belongs to which group.”

I am far, far from being a Ron Paul fan, for his libertarian principles lead him to as many irresponsible positions as ethical ones. And he is certainly emboldened to risk the displeasure of the Republican base as a candidate with about as much chance of getting the Republican nomination as I do (though more of a chance than Newt Gingrich).  But on a night when six of his rivals pandered to homophobia and embraced a policy that both violates core American values and endorses lying, Ron Paul alone had the courage and principle to correctly place “Don’t Ask” where it belongs, in conflict with the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.

Abuse of Power and Press Intimidation At The White House

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

"Hey, Herald! Get with the program!"

In response to a complaint by the Boston Herald about the limited access its staff would have to President Obama during his visit to Boston,  Matt Lehrich, an Obama aide, attributed the treatment to the White House’s objections to a front page opinion article by former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney in which he attacked the administration’s job-creation record. “I think that raises a fair question about whether the paper is unbiased in its coverage of the president’s visits,”  Lehrich told the Herald in an email.

And maybe it does. Then again, there is a mountain of evidence that hundreds of media outlets, including four of the five major TV news organizations, the New York Times, The Washington Post, and many others, are also biased in their coverage of everything this president does–favorably. Apparently the White House, which has already disgraced itself by repeatedly attacking the one critical network by name for the state offense of not falling into line, can’t abide the fact that some print journalists are as prone to be critical of him as Chris Matthews is likely to get tingles up his leg every time Obama opens his mouth. Their response? Make it harder for the unfavorably biased journalists to cover the news. Continue reading →

Mitt Romney’s Legal, Clever…Deceitful and Unethical Speaking Deal

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

Thank you. Mitt Romney. I mean it. I am grateful. I am frequently asked for an example of how a business tactic can be completely legal  and yet unethical all the same. Your brilliant double-deception is one for the ages.

Here is how it works: Continue reading →