St. Louis

Friday PM Ethics Discoveries, 5/15/2020: A Coup Option On The Way Out, A Narrative Reappears, Trump Tweets, Reasonable Discrimination Opposed, And More

/ Jack Marshall / 26 Comments

Well let’s check the ol’ ethics box and see what we have today!

1. That’s one coup option down the drain! Based on what reporters heard during the phoned-in oral arguments on Chiafalo v. Washington and State v. Baca, it appears that the Supreme Court is going to rule that states can require electors to vote for the candidates the state’s voters instructed them to vote for. If so, good. That will eliminate at least one of the unethical coup options that were attempted after Trump upset Clinton. You will recall that there was a mass effort to hijack the Electoral College using the rationalization that Alexander Hamilton would have approved.

Lawrence Lessig, the wacko Harvard law professor we have discussed here more than once, represented the electors who were blocked from voting against the electorate’s wishes. Maybe its just me, but if I’m going to be represented before the Supreme Court, I think I’d choose a lawyer who hadn’t announced that he was running for President  as a “referendum president” who would serve only as long as it took to pass some pet progressive legislation, and then would quit and let his VP take over. Lessig obviously does not take elections seriously; no wonder he thinks electors should be free to vote for Chucky Cheese.

2. “Nah, there’s no mainstream media bias!”, Fake History Division.  Adam Liptak, long-time SCOTUS reporter for the Times, writes in his story about #1 above,

“A swing by just 10 electors would have been enough to change the outcomes in five of the previous 58 presidential elections, according to a Supreme Court brief. In the 2000 election, after an assist from the Supreme Court, George W. Bush beat Al Gore by just five electoral votes.”

See how Liptak pushes a progressive narrative in what is supposed to be a news story? There was no “assist”; we now know that Bush would have won Florida’s electoral votes with or without SCOTUS halting the recount. What the ruling in 2000 assisted was the nation having an orderly transfer of power within a reasonable time. Even though the “Bush and the Supreme Court stole the Presidency” lie has been thoroughly exposed as such, Democrats and the news media keeps injecting it into the public’s consciousness by constant repetition. Continue reading →

Exhibit A On Why It Is Crucial To Understand Moral Luck: The Samuel Lee Scott Affair

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

St. Louis Bail Project is under attack for bailing out Samuel Lee Scott, who was in jail pending domestic abuse charges and couldn’t pay the court-ordered bond. Once Scott was free, he went home and killed his wife.

The bail system, which is being re-examined across the country, obviously discriminates against the poor. The idea underlying bail is to get the accused out of jail before trial, since he or she is by definition not guilty, and to create  a financial incentive for the accused to appear for trial. The system penalizes poverty, so non-profits like  the St. Louis Bail Project use their resources to allow poor defendants to have the same options rich ones do. It is an ethical mission.

The fact that this one bailee committed murder is pure moral luck regarding the Bail Project. The Project does not second guess the judge’s decision to allow bail, or the system’s determination that Scott wasn’t a flight risk or a danger to the community. Indeed, there may have been no reason to expect that Scott would kill anyone. That he did was moral luck, and cannot be logically or fairly applied retroactively to the St. Louis Bail Project’s decision to pay his bail. The fact that bail was set indicates that the system did not regard him as a threat.

The episode could justifiably spark a debate regarding when and if domestic abusers should be provided with an opportunity to go home, and whether bail in such situations should include a requirement that they live apart and stay away from the alleged victim. What it should not do is cause organizations like the St. Louis Bail Project to doubt the importance of their mission.

Morning Ethics Warm-Up, 11/1/2018: Battling Toddlers, Racist Lemons, And Justices In Love

/ Jack Marshall / 83 Comments

Welcome November!

1. Warm-Up musings…I suspect that the Warm-Up format costs the blog traffic, potentially a lot of traffic. If each was broken into components and posted individually, there would be a lot more clicks. Of course, I wouldn’t have time to post each separately—I estimate that a single post adds 15 to 20 minutes to the process—and there would be fewer issues covered. Capturing more of the events and issues that get into my files is one of the main reasons I started this. A better blog but less appreciated? Nah, I’m not going to measure success by traffic, as tempting as it is. I resist click-bait—there are topics that guarantee flood of comments—and don’t resist posting analysis that I know will cost me followers: I literally watch the numbers go down. And, of course, there are once regular readers who have fled because I have been consistent in my approach to the Trump Presidency, and regard his treatment by the “resistance,” Democrats, progressives and the news media as a national ethics catastrophe, irrespective of his own neon flaws. They fled, in part, though they will not admit it, because they simply could not muster valid arguments for why this President did not deserve the same presumptions of good will, good effort and public loyalty as every other President, traditional benefits that are essential to the office working and the nation thriving. What they represented as arguments were really presumptions of guilt and the byproduct of hateful group-think magnified by confirmation bias. I hope they eventually get well, and that when they do they aren’t too remorseful for being appropriated by an angry mob.

In the subsequent items, I’ll briefly explain why they are here rather than in a full post.

2. Unethical quote of the week: Don Lemon. Again. Earlier, Lemon said on his CNN platform,

“We have to stop demonizing people and realize the biggest terror threat in this country is white men, most of them radicalized to the right, and we have to start doing something about them. There is no travel ban on them. There is no ban — you know, they had the Muslim ban. There is no white-guy ban. So what do we do about that?”

Like so much Lemon says, this was incoherent, biased, and intellectually lazy. He said to stop demonizing people, and demonized a gender and race in the same sentence. “Start doing something” is typical political humming: do what, exactly? Lock them up? What? Any fool can say “Do something!”, and Lemon is just the fool to say it.  The travel restrictions are a non-sequitur, the kind of lame-brained argument that social media advances in memes and “likes.” Those restrictions involve non-citizens and their ability to immigrate. It was not based on race or ethnicity, but nation of origin. It’s an ignorant and misleading statement. “There is no white-guy ban. So what do we do about that?” is flat out racist, and intended to be—unless Lemon can’t speak clearly, which you would assume is a job requirement. A responsible news organization would have fired him, but he’s black and gay, so that’s not going to happen.

Then he came back and said this:

“Earlier this week, I made some comments about that in a conversation with Chris [Cuomo]. I said that the biggest terror threat in this country comes from radicals on the far right, primarily white men. That angered some people. But let’s put emotion aside and look at the cold hard facts. The evidence is overwhelming.”

Continue reading →

Morning Ethics Warm-up: 8/19/17—-The St. Louis Rally Cat Edition

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

Good morning!

1. The still unfinished saga of the St. Louis Rally Cat illustrates nicely how the most innocent-seeming events can spin out of control when the participants don’t heed their ethics alarms, or lack the instruction manual to operate them competently. As an aside, this baseball season has yielded a bumper crop of ethics controversies, the most I have ever seen, and it is far from over. In general, Major League Baseball’s participants, including its sportswriters,  are not very good at ethics, and the simple-minded virtue-signaling in the Tom Yawkey controversy is a recent, and embarrassing example. As an aside to an aside, I used to provide baseball ethics commentary at little or no cost to a well-regarded stat-head website, until they made it clear that they neither appreciated the importance of ethics in the sport, nor were capable of practicing it. Too bad. Baseball ethics is a lot more valuable than knowing the exit velocity and launch angle of a home run.

But I digress. The Rally Cat…and let’s count the ethics breaches:

Last week, the St. Louis Cardinals, fighting to overtake the Cubs in the closely contested and mediocre National League Central, were trying to rally back from looming defeat. The bases were loaded with Cardinals at Busch Stadium when a juvenile cat raced onto the field and halted play. A groundskeeper captured the cat, which mauled him as he carried it off the field. This was shown on the video scoreboard, provoking laughter and applause from the crowd.

As soon as play finally resumed, Cardinals catcher Yadier Molina hit a grand slam, and the Cardinals won as a result. Baseball players are superstitious, as the game is an orgy of moral luck, and such incidents typically create unlikely and illogical totems. In Los Angeles, there is a video of a monkey going nuts, the Angels’ “Rally Monkey.” In Boston, it is the old Neil Diamond ear-worm “Sweet Caroline.” Last year, the Kansas City Royals had a good luck praying mantis-–I’m not making this up—dubbed “The Rally Mantis.”  Back in the politically incorrect Twenties, the New York Giants had a mentally-challenged man travel with club as a mascot, because the team won the day he arrived and told Manager John McGraw that he was a great pitcher. For laughs, McGraw told the poor man that he was starting the game, and he actually warmed up on the sidelines as the players guffawed. He didn’t pitch, but the Giants won, so McGraw had him warm up before every game, as the team went on a winning streak.

So, naturally, the St. Louis cat was given the name Rally Cat, and responsibility for the Cardinal’s fate this season was placed squarely on its fluffy shoulders.

Now came the ethics botches:

Ethics breach #1. Lucas Hackmann, the cat-grabbing groundskeeper, let go of the feline talisman to get his bites attended to. Foul. He works for a baseball club; he is obligated to be aware of the culture he serves. He had to know, or should have known, that the cat would be a media star, and that the team, if it won the game, would want to employ him, or her. It. He also should know that cats do not stay, like dogs. The cat ran away, endangering the Cardinals’ season/

Incompetence.

Ethics breach #2. The Rally Cat was picked up by a fan, Korie Harris, and she left the park with it. Cardinals security questioned her, and she said it was her cat. Again,  Incompetence. The cat now had potential value to the security personnel’s employers. Why did a fan have a cat? You can’t bring a cat into the ballpark.

Ethics breach #3 Of course, it wasn’t her cat.  She was lying.  Dishonesty.

Ethics breach #4, 5, 6 and 7. Then Lying Korie (I bet that’s what the President calls her) also lost the cat. Some animal lover she is. If she was going to take custody of the animal, she had accepted responsibility for its welfare. She could have adopted it. She could have advertised to find its owner. She could have returned it to the Cardinals. She could have given it to a shelter—anyone but PETA, which would have probably killed it. No, she just let it go. Feral cats live a fraction of the average life of a house cat. Four fouls: Lack of responsibility, incompetence, dishonesty, and lack of caring.

Ethics breach #8 The Cardinals released a statement hoping that the cat would be found so the team could “properly care for it.” Right. A traveling baseball team is the perfect place for a cat. The Kansas City Royals killed the Rally Mantis, and quietly replaced him, thinking nobody, including the Baseball Gods, would notice. Ha! They missed the play-offs.

Again, this is dishonesty. The Cardinals don’t care about cats; if the team did, it would be donating money to animal shelters. It cares about good luck charms that can be used to promote the team..

 Ethics breach #9 The cat was found and taken into custody by St. Louis Cat Outreach, a nonprofit organization. The Cardinals claimed ownership. “The St. Louis Feral Cat Outreach organization has assured us they will be returning our cat to us after a mandatory 10-day quarantine period,” Ron Watermon, the team’s vice president for communications, said in an email to The St. Louis Post-Dispatch. “Rally Cat will be cared for by our team, making the Cardinals clubhouse his home,” Watermon said. “Mike (Mike Matheny, the Cardinals manager) and our players are looking forward to loving and caring for him.” Outrageous Dishonesty!  The cat shelter denied the story, posting on its Facebook page: “It was a totally false statement that STLFCO has committed anything to the Cardinals. We have made no decisions about Rally’s long-term placement.” Moreover, anyone who thinks the baseball team was “looking forward to loving and caring for” a cat in the middle of a pennant race will believe anything.

2. That took longer than I expected. I assume you are sufficiently warmed up, though.

Here’s Lucas and the Rally Cat:

____________________________

Pointer and Facts: New York Times

Post “Hands Up!” Race-Baiting Accountability Sagas: Antonio French and Taraji P. Henson

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

French

Thanks to three related factors…

1. The uncritical acceptance of Dorian Johnson’s false characterization of Mike Brown’s shooting by Ferguson Police Officer Darren Wilson, leading to a society-wide condemnation not only of Wilson but police departments across the country and white Americans as racially hostile to young black men, and

2. The fact that police officers have been shooting and killing an awful lot of unarmed black men, young or not, and

3. Inflammatory and irresponsible rhetoric from national and local leaders and elected officials

….we are in a dangerously unstable environment of virulent racial distrust, where the police are regarded as immediately suspect and placed in a defensive posture with a presumption of racism and excessive violence virtually any time an African American is the object of police action, regardless of the circumstances or justification. This is being exploited by those arrested, their families, civil rights activists, elected officials, protest organizers and the news media.

Here are two ugly sagas that illustrate the problem: Continue reading →

Ethics Hero Emeritus: Stan (“The Man”) Musial, 1920-2013

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

Stan Musial

Baseball great Stan Musial is a different kind of lifetime ethics hero, which is one reason it is important to so honor him. Unlike everyone who has ever received that designation here,  the iconic St. Louis Cardinal had no famous episode that crystallizes his character for posterity, no inspiring quotes attributed to him, nothing at all as impressive by itself as his athletic feats on the baseball field, which were among the most distinguished of any Major League baseball career. What was remarkable about Stan Musial is that over three decades in the public eye and four more after leaving it, he never did anything wrong.

Musial remained with one team his entire career, out of loyalty to the city and the fans who loved him. He never complained about where he batted in the order, or where he played; though he spent a lifetime being overshadowed in the sports pages by more colorful, edgier personalities like Ted Williams, Mickey Mantle and Willy Mays, he never whined about it, or made transparent efforts to seek the spotlight. He famously gave out autographs to all who asked with grace and a smile, even when the inflated price of athlete autographs soared. His team mates say that Musial visited children’s hospitals without the press or photographers in tow, because he performed such acts of kindness not for himself, but for the kids. Continue reading →

Albert Pujols: Yes, He’s Disloyal, Greedy, and Confused.

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

I'm sorry! This was supposed to be a picture of Albert Pujols, not King Midas. Well, six of one, half-dozen of the other...

Cardinal free agent first baseman Albert Pujols, generally regarded as the most talented baseball slugger alive, just jumped from his supposedly beloved St. Louis to the Los Angeles Angels because they offered him several more millions of dollars per year that he couldn’t possible spend if he tried than the Cardinals did. The attitude of most players, fans and sportswriters, not to mention the players’ union (naturally), is “Of course! Who wouldn’t?”

Who wouldn’t? A more ethical, less greedy, more thoughtful human being, that’s who.

The Angels won Pujols with an offer of $254 million dollars for ten years, making him the highest paid player on captivity. The Cardinals. on the other hand, whose fans had cheered him, embraced him and worshipped him, and which had established Pujols as one of the franchise’s icons fit to stand with Stan the Man Musial, Bob Gibson, Dizzy Dean and Lou Brock, had offered a measly $204 million for nine years, or about 23 million a year. The difference between the two offers is minimized, if not eliminated, by the cost of living disparity between the two locales: housing, for example, is about 250% more expensive in LA. Continue reading →

The Naked Teacher Principle Strikes Again!

/ Jack Marshall / 21 Comments

Once the class sees Teacher like this, it's over...

The Naked Teacher Principle holds, in essence, that once a teacher is seen by his or her students cavorting in the nude, school administrators and parents are not being unreasonable or unfair if they decide that the teacher can no longer teach effectively. From the classic example involving internet photos, to exceptions like the male teacher appearing in a community theater production of “The Full Monte”, to strange corollaries like “the Naked Butt-Painting Teacher with a Paper Bag Over His Head Variation,” naked teachers create headaches for their schools, giggles (at least) for their students, and anxiety for the teachers involved.

Now we have another variation. Continue reading →