open forums

Friday Open Forum If You Have The Stomach For It…

/ Jack Marshall / 22 Comments

I have to confess, this past week has me feeling overwhelmed. There may have been other weeks where the mendacity, corruption and hypocrisy were more apparent, and the prospects for a healthy nation and an ethical culture seemed dimmer, but I must have repressed those memories.

Yesterday, fraudulent GOP House member George Santos said that he had “led an honest life,” Joe Biden excused the latest discovery of classified documents in his garage by saying the garage was “locked,” and three more Virginia high schools admitted that they had withheld notice of National Merit Scholarship awards from students. The school superintendent, who is an DEI consultant and who pledged to seek “equal outcomes” for all students, swears these were independent, unrelated “mistakes.” All made by six high schools in her state. Coincidentally.

Give me hope today.

First Open Forum Of 2023!

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

Here is as good a place as any to note, since Ethics Alarms is also concerned with leadership as a sub-category to ethics, that Kevin McCarthy’s only ethical course at this point is to withdraw from the Speaker of the House race. It is clear that he cannot lead Republicans in the House, and the compromises and concessions he will need to make to get the support of the 20-plus member faction that opposes him would cripple his leadership as well as his party. Now it’s just selfishness, obstinacy and ego that has him holding on. None of those are ethical reasons to inflict yet another weak GOP Speaker on the nation.

McCarthy’s allies should also recognize this and 1) shut up or 2) move on. One, of course, is Donald Trump who can’t shut up, but who should be completely irrelevant to the Speaker battle. Another is Sean Hannity. It’s depressing that such a dim-wattage Fox News pundit as Hannity has the influence he does, and he proved his Peter Principle creds again in an argument on the air with conservative House member and anti-McCarthy leader Lauren Boebert. Sean apparently thought he had a “gotcha!” by calling Boebert on her statement that McCarthy should just give it up because he didn’t have the votes to win the Speakership. “But he has over 200 votes, and your group has just 20!” Hannity replied. “Shouldn’t you be the ones who give up?”

Uh, it’s like a filibuster, Sean, you dummy. Or a veto. The 20 don’t represent an alternative to McCarthy; they don’t have to elect a candidate to win. Their purpose is to block his ascension to the job, and they have enough votes to do it.

And this guy was advising President Trump…..

Anyway, you talk about what you want. I just needed to get that out. As Jimmy Durante would say, “It showed up on my last X-ray as a safety pin!”

Open Forum, Or “Let’s All Meet At The Street Corner And Sing Ethics Carols!”

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

Deck the page with rage at TwitterBla bla bla bla bla, bla bla bla blah! ‘Censorship should not seem bitterBla bla bla bla bla, bla bla bla blah! Free expression’s really hatefulBla bla bla, bla bla, bla, bla bla blah!Strangling it could make us grateful…Bla bla bla bla bla, bla bla bla blah!

Sing out, everybody! Cocoa and cookies at my house after!

 

Friday Open Forum, “But It Feels Like Sunday” Edition

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

I apologize: I didn’t focus on the fact that this was Friday until just now. Even at ProEthics, which never rests or takes a vacation, it has been so quiet that I was lulled into weekend mode. All the l-tryptophan didn’t help either. But there is still time to…

Ethics away!

(Ugh. I hate that fad Madison Avenue use of nouns, as in “Let’s movie!” I had to try it once to be sure just how much I hated it. Sorry.)