Occupy Wall Street

Ethics Tales From The “Occupy” Movement

/ Jack Marshall / 25 Comments

1. Integrity Check

"This week only: half-price on all chicken suits!"

Reports out of Occupy Wall Street, unconfirmed but apparently credible enough for New York’s Mayor Bloomberg to rely on them, suggest that the “Occupy” gang is refusing to report the various criminals in their midst, opting instead to protect the colony by ejecting and banishing them….and, of course, inflicting them on somebody else. Such wrongdoers range from simple thieves to sexual predators, or, as in Occupy Oakland,  the violent provocateurs who have seeded riots. They might not even be banished…just protected.

How ironic. The ethical rot in America’s institutions, from government to the business world, to religions and Hollywood, to athletic teams and academia, manifests itself by a progressive willingness to ignore misconduct, lawlessness, and unethical conduct among colleagues and others within the group, cementing a “them vs. us” mentality that encourages increasingly irresponsible conduct and erodes integrity. The so-called 99% have the same vulnerability to corruption as the 1% they revile. Continue reading →

Occupy Wall Street: “This Is What We Want!” Finally! Oh…THAT.

/ Jack Marshall / 41 Comments

Time to stop wasting our time.

After more than a month of demonstrations that have cost millions, deflected local governments from vital matters, inconvenienced and clogged cities across the country, invigorated anarchists, communists, fascists, free-loaders and loonies, suckered desperate Democrats into declaring common cause with a mob, and exposed the worst of Left-wing punditry as the embarrassing demagoguery society that it is…and after well-intentioned demonstrators have been robbed, arrested, and injured…the Occupy” movement finally is finally ready to declare what it wants.

It’s about time. Large-scale demonstrations to express “frustration” are the advocacy equivalent of humming, or maybe belching: speak clearly, or get off the street.  On October 9, Ethics Alarms described the Occupy Wall Street demonstration, in the context of pointing out the friendly mainstream media embrace of a left-ish, anti-capitalist mob in contrast to its open contempt for the peaceful, focused and conservative Tea Party, as “incoherently chanting anarchists, radicals and unemployed youths…advocating nothing constructive whatsoever.” Many of the site’s distinguished readers objected to that characterization, with one, blogger Jeff Field,  promising to produce an articulation of what the protest really wants to accomplish. Today he fulfilled that promise by sending me a statement by an “Occupy” supporting group, with his introduction, “This is what we want.” I am genuinely grateful to Jeff…especially since it shows that I was correct in my assessment, however harsh. Continue reading →

Scott Olsen, The “Occupy” Movement and The Protest Dilemma

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

The critics of the various Occupy Wall Street demonstrations are hustling to defuse the backlash from an incident that took place this week in Oakland, where a confrontation between police and Occupy Oakland protesters not only led to many arrests, but also a severely injured protestor. Iraq war veteran Scott Olsen is hospitalized with a fractured skull as a result of being hit by a projectile directed by police, probably a tear gas canister.

In the age of YouTube, the various images of Olsen’s injury were quickly exploited by protest organizers, as should be expected and is entirely fair. All demonstrations and protests are ultimately about public relations: if the protesters manage to be viewed more sympathetically than the group they are protesting against, then they attract sympathy and support. They win. If the protesters become unsympathetic, then they lose. All intense demonstrations eventually become a game of chicken between demonstrators and the government’s law enforcement force, be it police or National Guard. The demonstrators refuse to clear out of an area where they do not have a right to be, either because of the lack of a permit, or because they are disrupting the public peace, safety and welfare. They will try to provoke police without appearing so violent, unruly or scary that they lose public support. The police (or National Guard) have a job to do—they also have their own physical safety to protect—and yet they have to avoid making martyrs out of the demonstrators by appearing too militaristic, and also to make sure that their efforts don’t evoke images of police state oppression. Continue reading →

Fox News Inveils the Unethical Poll of the Month AND Inspires a Fun New Pastime: “The Stupid Choices Game”

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

A Stupid Choice classic from my youth!

Fox News is determined to show that America hates the Occupy Wall Street protesters, and keeps devising polls increasingly rigged to make their case. This morning Roger Ailes’ culture warriors unveiled a new one, so intellectually dishonest, so devoid of survey legitimacy, that it made me do a Danny Thomas spit-take that soaked my Washington Post with coffee. The question (Note: This is from memory; as of this writing, I cannot find the exact phrasing posted anywhere. When I have it, I’ll use it. This is a fair approximation, however.): “What would you want your child to do when he or she grows up?” The options: 1. Working on Wall Street 2. Occupying Wall Street 3. Neither.

The “surprising results,” as one of Fox’s cloned blond bimbo news-readers bubbled:

44% chose Wall Street

28% chose Occupy Wall Street

18% chose “Neither”

Fox financial commentator Stuart Varney was shocked that 28% would choose the protesters “who want to redistribute income!” over Wall Street. “I’m sorry,” he said, “but that is un-American.”

Oh, cool your jets, Stuart. The poll is un-American; the 28% are fine, given the dishonest, false choice presented by Fox’s poll. Continue reading →

Young, Gullible, Lazy, Unimaginative and Unbelievable: I Wonder Why This Lawyer Has Trouble Finding A Job?

/ Jack Marshall / 135 Comments

Well, clearly “sign-maker” isn’t an option…

I have some observations regarding this unemployed lawyer’s lament as he Occupies Wall Street.

It is true that many law schools have been exposed lately for inflating their employment statistics. The American Bar Association announced last month that it was drafting a rule including sanctions for law schools that intentionally falsify jobs data, possibly including monetary fines or the loss of accreditation. That is as it should be.

Nonetheless, I am dubious about the sign’s 99.9% claim, especially in the absence of a named institution. Promising 100% employment to any group seems excessive, and a person of normal intelligence would, or certainly should be skeptical. Thus, after only the first line, I am dubious about the candor and/or judgment of the sign-holder.

I am also dubious about his account of his conversation with the Dean. Do you know what the unemployment rate was for lawyers in 2010, according to the U.S. Department of Labor? Continue reading →

Unethical Quote of the Week: Fired NPR Host Lisa Simeone

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

And NPR finds it puzzling that you can't read an ethics code, Lisa...

“I find it puzzling that NPR objects to my exercising my rights as an American citizen — the right to free speech, the right to peaceable assembly — on my own time in my own life”

—-Lisa Simeone, who was fired as host of a radio show carried by an NPR affiliate (and is likely to be fired from another NPR distributed program) for serving as a spokesperson of the Occupy Wall Street spin-off group camped out in Freedom Square in Washington, D.C. Her activities violated multiple provisions of the National Public Radio Code of Ethics.

This was a dishonest, unfair and misleading  statement. Continue reading →

NOW Is It Obvious That NPR Has A Liberal Bias Problem?

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

Recently spotted swimming through the NPR Ethics Code's loopholes

[Notice to Readers: Check the update at the end of the article.]

The problem, incidentally, is not that NPR has a liberal bias, but that it so emphatically dishonest about it. Despite the Juan Williams fiasco, when the publicly funded radio network’s only Africa-American contributor was fired for politically incorrect truth-telling, despite the cover-up, when his boss twisted the Code of Ethics to justify the action (and violated it herself in the process)—despite the James O’Keefe embarrassment, with an NPR board member being recorded while sounding like a Saturday Night Live parody of a biased media leader—-and despite a spate of  naval-gazing within the organization to find ways to show the oddly deluded public that NPR is really and truly “fair, unbiased, accurate, complete and honest”… leaving “no question about [their] independence and fairness” —I’m sorry; I had a fit of the giggles there for a second—-National Public Radio can’t help itself. In the matters of bias, integrity, double standards, conflicts of interest and fairness, its ethics alarms were either never installed or have turned to cheese.

Tell Juan Williams about this: National Public Radio’s Lisa Simeone, who  hosts NPR’s nationally syndicated “World of Opera” program as well as “SoundPrint,” a program that airs on NPR’s WAMU affiliate  in Washington, D.C., has served as a spokeswoman for the Occupy Wall Street spin-off group, “October 2011,” which is currently occupying Freedom Plaza in Washington, D.C. and making all the same contradictory, vague and impossible progressive/ leftist/anarchist demands that its parent is. Continue reading →

Comment of the Day: “Dear AIG: I’m Not Going To Be Able To Keep Criticizing Occupy Wall Street For Destructive Class Warfare If You Act Like This”

/ Jack Marshall / Leave a comment

Michael, who now leads the field in Comments of the Day, picks up another with his commentary on my post about AIG’s continuing habit of living large on taxpayer funds. Here are his reflections on the post  Dear AIG: I’m Not Going To Be Able To Keep Criticizing “Occupy Wall Street” For Destructive Class Warfare If You Act Like This:

“A company can allow any expenses they want. That being said, since they are now majority owned by the US government, we need to ask who is giving the go ahead to things like this? Why haven’t they been fired? The Wall Street culture is so entitled and so out of touch with the reality of the common Americans that it is almost beyond belief.

“The Occupy Wall Street group could have a lot of legitimate gripes, but they don’t seem to have anyone with half a brain in the group. Instead of hearing “I want them to take the money from rich people and give it to me” form a college aged girl wearing $500 worth of clothes or “I have gone to every protest I can find for the last 40 years” from the aging hippies, why not try one of the following angles: Continue reading →

Occupy Wall Street: Unethical Demonstration, Unethical Supporters

/ Jack Marshall / 23 Comments

If this is the level of your comprehension, I really don’t care what you think.

“Ethics Bob” Stone recently posted about the ethics of mass demonstrations like “Occupy Wall Street,” noting that long-term, open-ended demonstrations begin crossing ethical lines once they accomplish the goal of sending a message and hang around anyway, creating fertile ground for violence, and, though Bob doesn’t mention this, inconveniencing the public, wasting scarce municipal funds, and tempting pundits to make fools out of themselves.

Even with this, Bob is giving the Occupiers more credit than they deserve. A group that imposes its presence on the public, law enforcement, and local governments is entitled to express a minority and even a crackpot viewpoint. There is an ethical obligation, however, not to abuse the right of assembly and the precious time of everyone else by creating a big disturbance that means nothing, conveying a message that is irresponsible because it is based on ignorance.

New York Magazine quizzed the Occupy Wall Street demonstrators, and discovered that: Continue reading →

Double Standard Ethics: What the “Occupy Wall Street” Demonstrations Have Revealed So Far

/ Jack Marshall / 41 Comments

1. When well-behaved middle-class Americans held rallies protesting specific U.S. policies, notably excessive spending, a CNN  reporter challenged them on camera and accused the effort of being a creation of Fox News. When incoherently chanting anarchists, radicals and unemployed youths hold rallies advocating nothing constructive whatsoever, reporters are invariably respectful.

2. Thanks to the efforts of snickering CNN and MSNBC hosts, the emerging Tea Party was immediately referred to using a crude term for a gay sexual act. No such denigrating term has been employed to describe “Occupy Wall Street.” Continue reading →