New York City

A “Great Stupid” Mash-Up! Ethics Hero And Incompetent Elected Official Of The Month: San Mateo County Supervisor David Canepa…And Some Related Comments Of The Day [Corrected]

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

I never expected to see those two categories in the same post, did you?

But it has come to this: San Mateo County Supervisor David Canepa told reporters this week that he regretted his vocal support of California’s Prop 47, which voters passed in 2014, which reduced certain thefts and drug possession crimes from felonies to misdemeanors if the value of the stolen goods was less than $950. This, amazingly, led to an explosion in retail crime and other social pathologies, with videos on social media showing looters casually walking out of stores with merchandise. Some prominent retail locations in San Francisco, LA and other cities have closed in response.

This was all part of the progressive-Democratic response to “over-incarceration,” with politicians like Joe Biden, California Governor Gavin Gavin Newsom, and mercifully retired NYC mayor Bill De Blasio, among others. The Retail Federation reported retail shrink across the U.S. reached nearly $100 billion in losses in 2022.

Gee, what a brilliant idea Prop 47 was !

Continue reading →

Ethics Alarms Challenge! Provide A Sincere, Persuasive Ethical Argument Why This Isn’t An Epic Example Of ‘The Great Stupid’

/ Jack Marshall / 22 Comments

(Yes, it made my head explode.)

Hot on the heels of the news this week that owners of the 1,921-room Hilton San Francisco Union Square, San Francisco’s largest hotel, occupying an entire city block, is being abandoned by its owners because that woke city has become such a hopeless hell-hole that they can’t see the convention and tourism business rebounding comes New York City’s health officials installing the city’s first free drug paraphernalia vending machine in Brooklyn. It features all sorts of goodies for users and addicts, like crack pipes, “Safer Sniffing” kits, drug testing kits and the anti-overdose medication Naloxone. The vending machine also has hygiene kits for the special problems addicts face (like cracked lips) and safe sex kits. Anyone with a New York City ZIP code can claim any of the contents for no charge. The Brooklyn vending machine is the first of four machines that will be installed in neighborhoods that were hit hardest by the opioid crisis.

Wow, what a great idea. I think it’s a great idea. Don’t you think it’s a great idea?

Continue reading →

Now Washington, D.C. Wants To Cheapen Citizenship

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

Of course it does.

this week, a D.C. Council committee unanimously approved a bill to allow non-citizens to vote in local elections, and just to make sure the intent was clear, an amendment was added including illegal immigrants to the voting rolls as well. Oh, the term used is “undocumented’ or some other cover-word to avoid the sorry truth, but you know what’s going on.

Several towns in Maryland and Vermont already give non-citizens municipal voting rights. Non-citizens vote in school board elections in San Francisco, and cities in California, Maine, Illinois and Massachusetts have similar legislation on the drawing board. The inclusion of illegal aliens is more unusual, but D.C.’s elected officials apparently felt the need to virtue-signal after reacting like stuck Swamp Creatures when a few hundred illegals were bused to their metaphorical shores. Like Martha’s Vineyard, the “sanctuary city”-preening District loves illegals as long as the vast number of them have to be cared for and paid for by Texas, Florida, Arizona…you know, the where Little People dwell.

Continue reading →

Ethics Quiz: Public Art Ethics

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

“Ancestor,” a new sculpture by Bharti Kher,  has been chosen to reside at the Fifth Avenue and 60th Street entrance to Central Park in New York City for the next year. It’s 18 feet tall, has 24 heads (detail below)….

…and is made to look old and weathered, though it was cast in bronze and is fresh out of the oven, or whatever. The Times says,

“Ancestor” is, at its core, an Indian goddess form, the kind found in Hindu popular iconography, with hair that rises in a bun yet somehow also hangs in a braid. But protruding in clumps pell-mell from her upper body are 23 extra heads, each with its own expression, peering this way and that.

You can read about what the artist thinks this mess means here. I don’t even have a coherent quiz question to pose, just a group of puzzled queries that follow my immediate, “What the hell?” Continue reading →

Ethics Quote Of The Month: Madeline Brame

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

“Take that restorative justice bullshit and shove it up your asses! Not for murder!”

—-Madeline Bram, mother of murder victim Hason Correa, 35, a vet and married father of three who was beaten and stabbed to death by a gang in 2018, when the Manhattan Supreme Court handed down a seven year prison sentence to one of the killers.

Well said.

Bram erupted after hearing that the absurdly light sentence had been agreed to by the office of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg (above). Bragg is one of several big city DA’s elected with the assistance of George Soros contributions (not that there’s anything wrong with that) who stand for leniency in the justice system as a solution to “over-incarceration.”

The solution to “over-incarceration” is for African Americans to commit crimes in rough proportion to their numbers in U.S. society. Minimizing the consequences of committing these crimes will not achieve that end.

Duh. Continue reading →

There Is Hope: In NYC, Again The Courts To The Rescue!

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

The day before last Thanksgiving, in the day’s “warm-up,” I closed out with this item:

Leaping down a slippery slope. The New York City Council is about to approve a bill allowing more than 800,000 non-citizens to vote in municipal elections if they have green cards or are otherwise residing in the United States legally The measure is expected to be approved in December by a veto-proof margin. It would not allow non-citizens to vote in federal or state elections. This is such a bad idea that Mayor de Blasio, who loves most terrible ideas if they are sufficiently progressive, opposes it. But several towns in Maryland and Vermont already give non-citizens municipal voting rights. Non-citizens vote in school board elections in San Francisco, and cities in California, Maine, Illinois and Massachusetts have similar legislation on the drawing board.

Why wasn’t this a full post? Oh, lot’s of reasons….mostly the fact that the locale was New York City, and like edicts by the mayors of Washington, D.C. and Chicago, and the wacko measures approved in San Francisco, Portland, Seattle and the states those cities are in, New York City’s progressives advocating policies that undercut our democracy and cheapen citizenship (and the Rule of Law, equal treatment under law…don’t get me started!) is hardly news. It’s like the old “dog bites man/man bites dog” definition of news. If New York City bucks progressive mania for a change, that’s news.

Nobody commented even on the item.

Continue reading →

More Scary Tales Of The Great Stupid: New York’s “Restorative Justice”

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

Indeed, Major Clifton. You can’t get much crazier (or stupid) than this.

As I have related here before, in my fortuitous accidental opportunity to chat privately with genius Herman Kahn many years ago, he observed that societies periodically suffer mass amnesia and forget why traditions, rules and policies that had existed for centuries exist. They then try something new that seems like a good idea at the time, only to be reminded it is, in fact, a terrible idea, and one that everyone once knew was a terrible idea, which is why it had been wisely dismissed centuries or even eons ago. This cycle is needlessly destructive, and those who trigger it are incompetent and irresponsible, usually choosing to adopt magical thinking over cold, hard reality because it supports their ideology. For some reason, or because of a cosmic practical joke, the United States is being tortured by such misbegotten inspirations. “Hey! Let’s just let anyone into the country who wants to come!” “Let’s defund the police!” “Let’s give up on stopping people from getting addicted to drugs!” “Let’s wear masks over the lower parts of our faces all the time, just to be safe! And make our kids do it too!” “Hey, why not spend as much money as we want even when we’re already deep in debt?” (I had to stop myself mid-list because the examples popping into my head were obviously going to keep coming.)

New York City has embraced one of the more ridiculous of the ideas arising out of magical thinking, societal amnesia and The Great Stupid: “restorative justice.” Part of an ambitious reform package created by former NYC Mayor Bill De Blasio (“Hey! Let’s take advice from one of New York City’s most disastrous failures ever!”), restorative justice is, like so many recent terrible ideas, a response to the uncomfortable results of cultural pathologies in the black community. In 2019, De Blasio announced the criminal justice revolution, which was, he explained, necessary because ““For far too long, this city’s answer to every societal problem was to throw people in jail. We lost generations to mass incarceration, mostly young men of color.” Yes, it was “disparate impact” again! Punishing criminals and enforcing laws had a disparate impact on black Americans, because they are still committing a disproportional number of serious and violent crimes. Solution: Stop punishing criminals and enforcing laws!

Continue reading →

“Ethics? What’s Ethics?” Mayor Adams Takes The Reins…[Updated!]

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

Next time a New York Democrat complains about an elected government official’s ethics when he or she identifies as Republican, breaking out into uncontrollable laughter would be appropriate.

New New York City Eric Adams, elected as the “anti-de Blasio,” almost immediately proved that he has at least one thing in common with New York’s “Worst Mayor Ever.” Just a few days ago, Ethics Alarms noted that the former mayor had defiantly continued to ask corporate contractors for the city to contribute to a de Blasio slush fund, in a time honored unethical shakedown ploy known as “pay to play,” even though he had been formally warned to cut it out by the city’s ethics board. Now the new improved mayor is also signalling that he isn’t very concerned about ethics, the appearance of impropriety, or conflicts of interest.

Adams appointed as his sole male deputy mayor (the other five are female) Philip Banks III, who comes with some interesting baggage. (That’s Banks above on the right, the new mayor is on the left.)

Continue reading →

Not Seeking Prison Sentences For Serious Crimes Has Worked So Well In San Francisco, Manhattan’s DA Will Do The Same

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

The title is sarcastic: that is the proverbial flat learning curve above.

The “woke” DA of the City by the Bay’s policies have contributed to turning San Francisco into such a crime-ridden hell-hole that even its uber-progressive mayor, London Breed, has metaphorically cried “uncle.” So, naturally, the new DA for Manhattan, ushered into office just as the city has a new mayor who pledged to be tough on crime, wants to follow a similarly lenient policy regarding criminals….and New York is already suffering from its worst crime wave since the Seventies.

What could go wrong?

In his introductory memo to his staff this week, Alvin Bragg announced that his office “will not seek a carceral sentence” except for murder and a handful of other cases, including domestic violence felonies, some sex crimes and public corruption.

Continue reading →

Furious Ethics Catch-Up, 1/4/2022: “I’m Not Dead!” Edition

/ Jack Marshall / 43 Comments

Well, there I was last night, showing my wife my favorite “Schoolhouse Rock” segment (“Interjections,” a Grammar Rock episode) and getting ready to post an evening ethics potpourri when the Disney Channel, which I only have because I wanted to see the “Get Back” documentary, kicked out. The snow storm’s aftermath had caused an outage in our phone and internet connection (at least we had power, and weren’t stuck on I-95 like hundreds of motorists in Northern Virginia were last night), and Comcast didn’t get everything back up until a few minutes ago. A totally lost day for ProEthics and Ethics Alarms, but the sage words of my friend Tom Fuller kept echoing in my brain like all the Tara lines coming back to Scarlet after Rhett walks out on her. “When you have no options, you have no problem,” Tom always says, and this was a classic example. We were snowed in, and had no communications (not even a newspaper since the second); might as well relax: Snow day!

I was able to get a head start on some items, at least. I apologize for the void…and for any comments marooned in moderation (as well as the inevitable mermaidmary comment unjustly spammed).

But at least I’m not dead.

[That’s the correct Mark Twain quote above, incidentally. He also said, “I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it.”]

Continue reading →