“the ends justify the means”

Unethical Quote of the Week: Dick Cheney

/ Jack Marshall / 37 Comments
Hello, I'll be your torturer today. Now, if you are innocent, please understand, on balance this works.

Hello, my name is Skug, and I’ll be your torturer today. Now, if you are innocent, please understand, on balance this works.

“I’m more concerned with bad guys who got out and released than I am with a few that, in fact, were innocent.”

—Former V.P. Dick Cheney, giving his reactions on “Meet the Press” regarding the Senate’s critique of the Bush Administration and the CIA’s interrogation methods.

I try to be fair to Dick Cheney, whose character has been distorted beyond all recognition by his partisan foes. Sunday, however, he was apparently attempting to validate all the most terrible things anyone has said about him, as well as providing future students of ethics real life examples of ethical fallacies.

The one quoted above is the pip: so much for the jurisprudential principle that “It is better that ten guilty persons escape, than that one innocent suffer.”   Chuck Todd reminded Cheney that 25% of those detained were apparently innocent. The Cheney variation: “It is OK if some innocent persons are unjustly punished as long as the bad guys get what they deserve.”

It is hard to pick the most unethical assertion, however; there are so many horrible statements to choose from. Such as: Continue reading →

Unethical (and Cynical) Donation Of The Year: The St. Louis Rams’ Forgiveness Bribe To The Backstoppers

/ Jack Marshall / 31 Comments
"Agreed, then: you can call us racist murderers, as long as you keep the donations coming...."

“Agreed, then: you can call us racist murderers, as long as you keep the donations coming….”

Let us be undiplomaticly clear about what the five St. Louis Rams players did when they came onto the field at the start of a Monday Night Football games with their hands in the air like the fictional, idealized, sanitized, imaginary and politically useful version of Michael Brown—you know: the angelic young college-bound African-American male who did nothing whatsoever to cause the circumstances of his own death.

The players were saying, on national television, with millions of people watching, that Officer Darren Wilson executed Mike Brown in cold blood; that the St. Louis police do such things, want to do such things, and will do such things, because they routinely target young black men for harm; and that police generally, around the nation, are virulent racists. That’s what the gesture meant, and that is what it was devised to convey. Continue reading →

Ethics Hero: Sen. John McCain

/ Jack Marshall / 29 Comments

waterboard1

While other Republicans are attacking the Senate report on torture as a political hit piece by Democrats—which, in part, it is, but that doesn’t diminish its significance—the one Senator who has experienced torture is supporting the report’s conclusions and criticism, saying…

I know from personal experience that the abuse of prisoners will produce more bad than good. Most of all, I know the use of torture compromises that which most distinguished us from our enemies.”

Exactly.

My position on this topic is unchanged from what I wrote in 2006, which you can read here.

The Gruber Corruption Files: Another University Decides A Cover-Up Is “The Right Thing To Do,” While The News Media Spins For Obama

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments
Who cares?

Who cares?

After the Jonathan Gruber video that included the Obamacare insider crowing about passing a misleading health care bill thanks “the stupidity of the American voter” in an October 2013 panel appearance at The University of Pennsylvania, the institution, good, compliant, loyal to Obama and apparently complicit in the Administration’s philosophy of deception, hid the damning comments by taking the video offline. The university reposted it after being compared to the Soviet Union and condemned for censoring knowledge rather than spreading it.

On Monday, the University of Rhode Island also attempted to assist the progressive cover-up of its contempt for the public and democracy, removing its video of  2012 discussion where Gruber explains how the law was passed to “exploit” the American voters’ “lack of economic understanding.” So far, URI has offered no explanation regarding why the video was pulled, and it doesn’t have to.

The video was pulled because the overwhelmingly left-leaning academic establishment in the U.S., like the similarly slanted journalistic establishment, have taken sides, choosing to assist and abet the desperate, anti-democratic efforts by Democrats to lie, hide and spin their way out of the fair and clear implications of Gruber’s inconvenient truths. This is frightening, and every citizen regardless of political preference should understand that the effort must be foiled if our system of government is to regain lost trust and integrity. Universities and journalists are supposed to be truth-seekers, and in this matter are behaving like political operatives. Note that only Fox and the National Review, so far, have reported Rhode Island’s efforts to bury Gruber’s statements, and that is just a continuation of a disconcerting theme throughout this fiasco.

From an excellent Examiner summary of how the mainstream media is spinning the story: Continue reading →

Ethics Hero: CNN’s Jake Tapper

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

Light in the darknessNot all non-conservative media journalists are working to assist Democrats in their frantic damage control now that their epic contempt for the democratic process, transparency, truth, and the American public has been exposed by the videotaped crowing of paid manipulator Jonathan Gruber.

When junior Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy (D) did his part by following the current game plan and attempting to dismiss Gruber as a footnote by tweeting…

“It’s sad to me that good political journalists are spending so much time on these irrelevant comments by this guy Gruber”

…CNN anchor Jake Tapper shot back in a tweet of his own,

“@ChrisMurphyCT respectfully, it’s sad to me that some politicians would claim the comments are irrelevant”

Tapper was using the device of ironic parallel construction, but it’s more than sad, it is horrifying. An insider who was crucial to the drafting of Obamacare admits that the Administration’s objective was to mislead the Congressional Budget Office and deceive “stupid voters,” and now the party that paid him $400,000 is covering up with a series of rationalizations, denials and lies. This is the fourth of the defenses apparently being emailed to all loyal Obamacare defenders from the high command.

First we have the rationalization: “Everybody does this with bills..it’s no big deal.”

Second is the brazen lie, or the Jumbo: “We were completely transparent!”

Third is the totalitarian mantra, “Hey, it was the only way, and it was worth it!” (The ends justify the means.)

The Fourth: airbrushing history, the Nancy Pelosi amnesia: “Who is this guy?”

The proof of Senator Murphy’s complicity is the Clintonian “this guy, Gruber, ” echoing “that woman, Miss Lewinsky.” Gruber had been lavishly praised by both Harry Reid on the floor of the Senate and Pelosi: Murphy knows damn well who “that guy” is, and why his revelations remove all semblance of trustworthiness from his party and its leaders…unless they can trick those stupid voters one more time!!

One journalist from the mainstream media, at least, is on to them.

Observations On The Gruber Tapes: Tipping Points, Integrity Checks, Totalitarian Tactics and Very Loud Ethics Alarms

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments

domino

A lot of people in the Obama administration, the media, and even some of your friends would like to characterize the many videos of Jonathan Gruber revealing, as Geraldo Rivera called it, himself an apologist for the administration, “the ugly side of the political process” as no big deal. It is a big deal. I recognized it as a big deal from the first of the videos, as every objective and honest American should. The tapes are as significant and important as the Nixon White House tapes, which revealed  a conspiracy at the highest levels of the government to cover up a criminal attempt to rig the political process and corrupt democracy. Those tapes prompted reforms and political upheaval. So should Gruber’s inconvenient truths, if we believe that our form of government is worth saving. This should be a tipping point. We cannot tolerate this, nor long survive it.

We all should make sure that the many ideologues, activists, hacks and villains who want to ignore the significance of the Gruber tapes fail, and while doing so, metaphorically mark their chests with a giant, red “C” for “corrupter,” if not a “T” for “traitor.” I have heard all the excuses. lies, spin and rationalizations now. If you care about the American system, and want to be part of the solution to this ethics rot in our government and leadership rather than siding with those who want to continue it, then just think a bit. If you banish your biases, you’ll come to the right conclusion, which is this: what Gruber has revealed is serious, dangerous, and wrong.

Some specific ethics observations and conclusions:

1. Apparently the entire Democratic party, the progressive movement and many of the elites in journalism and academia have embraced the undemocratic principle, a key tenet of the theories of Lenin, Islam, Mao, Joseph Alinsky, Goebbels, Joe McCarthy and Big Brother, to mix historical and fictional villains, that deceiving the public and the use of lies are  virtuous and necessary means of governing, because the public does not know what is in its own best interest. This is totalitarianism. There is no disguising it. It is sinister and intolerable. It should not be sugar-coated, and the public needs to be told, in unambiguous terms, why this is more than political expediency. It is a rejection of the premises and ideals that the nation was founded upon. We must reject it, and reject those who excuse it, rationalize it and employ it, in either political party.

The party that has been caught red handed, however, with no plausible escape, is the party of the Affordable Care Act.

2. Every bob and weave, lie and double-lie in response to Gruber’s videos, have failed. The fact that the lies were attempted, however, underscores how serious the corruption is. I immediately went to Media Matters when the story broke. The one-sided advocacy group that pretends that progressives can do no wrong and that there is a conservative media conspiracy, if you can read that without passing out from laughing, has been in rare form in its frenzied efforts to pretend that Gruber’s exposés are meaningless. It headlines its empty defense “The Fraudulent Media Campaign To Scandalize Obamacare’s Passage,” though the mainstream (that is, liberal) media, to its permanent shame, tried to ignore the story longer than I would have thought possible. Then MM tries to bolster White House spokesman Josh Earnest’s risible claims that the Affordable Care Act was passed with unusual transparency. Yes, I’d say lying outright about what the bill would do is unusual transparency, though that’s not what they mean.

This is, as I already pointed out, a Jumbo-–a desperate lie that is obviously a lie to anyone with their eyes open. No law that complex is transparent; no bill that isn’t permitted debate in its final form is transparent; no text that is so long and convoluted that it can’t be read (or printed out from the internet without owning a paper store) is transparent. If it was transparent, we wouldn’t be heading to the Supreme Court over what the proponents of the law term a “typo.” If it was transparent, then what was always intended to be a tax would not have been furiously defended as not being a tax. If it was transparent, the President would not have told the public over 30 times that the law’s passage would not cause anyone to lose a healthcare plan they liked.  The passage of Obamacare was not transparent. Anyone who claims otherwise is one of the liars, earning that big, red “C.” Continue reading →

Ethics Alarms Salutes Ron Fournier, A Real Journalist And An Honest Man

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

RON-FOURNIER

National Journal senior political columnist Ron Fournier is a former Washington bureau chief for the Associated Press. He tends to get slammed from all sides of the political spectrum, because he is a liberal journalist with integrity and an open mind, capable of objectivity and willing to criticize those who would like to regard him, like the rest of the mainstream media, as a reliable bulwark against accountability.

Fournier’s recent column examining the serial Jonathan Gruber admissions regarding the mindset behind the effort to ram the Affordable Care Act down America’s throat without even warning us to hold our noses is a spark of hope for those of us who despair of U.S. journalists ever showing the character to practice journalism. Titled, appropriately, “A Foundation of Lies,” his column bolsters several ethics assessments made on Ethics Alarms. I was especially heartened to read this sentiment regarding media spin, a topic most recently discussed on the blog here:

“…a Washington Post story headlined, “Who Is Jonathon Gruber?” …was an important and workmanlike report on the Obamacare adviser who bragged about the political advantages of deceiving voters, whom Gruber called stupid. ‘Those comments have struck a nerve on the right,” wrote Jose A. DelReal (emphasis added), “with some of the law’s critics pointing to Gruber’s comments as evidence that the administration intentionally deceived the American public on the costs of the programs.’

My first reaction was, ‘No! No! Not just on the right!’ I strongly support bipartisan efforts to expand the availability of health coverage to the working poor, and bending the cost curve that threatens federal budgets for years to come. While I think President Obama and congressional Democrats helped contribute to the 2009 standoff over what became the Affordable Care Act, I’ve openly rooted for Obamacare’s success. I’ve denounced the knee-jerk opposition from the GOP, a party that once embraced key elements of Obamacare. My ideology is amorphous; I am not “on the right.”All of that, and yet: Gruber’s remarks struck a nerve with me.”

Continue reading →

A Jumbo For Press Secretary Josh Earnest

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

jumbo

Responding to damning comments from key Obamacare architect Jonathan Gruber that the passage of the ACA  was predicated on avoiding transparency and exploiting “stupid voters,” White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said this during a press briefing in Burma:

“The fact of the matter is, the process associated with the writing and passing and implementing of the Affordable Care Act has been extraordinarily transparent.”

Extraordinarily!

Except, of course, for the President and other elected officials repeatedly saying that “if you like your plan, you can keep your plan—period.”

Oh…and that it was drafted in secrecy by lobbyists from the health care industry and Congressional aides and voted on before anyone in Congress had an opportunity to read it in its final form.

Then there was the fact that the usual procedure of vetting the bill through committees in the House and Senate was bypassed, and floor debate was curtailed.

Of course, the bill was so long and written in such impenetrable jargon and had so many cross-references that it was unreadable. This is wht Nancy Pelosi explained that we had to pass it to find out what was in it.

Other than that, though…wait!

There was the little device of swearing that the individual mandate was not a tax until the bill was passed, then arguing before the Supreme Court that it was in fact a tax, as the bill’s architects intended from the start.

Extraordinarily transparent.

“Elephant? What elephant?”

Jumbo.

 

Jonathan Gruber’s Obamacare Fraud Confession [UPDATE]: “Nothing To See Here…Move Along”

/ Jack Marshall / 21 Comments

[Yes, I know I’ve had this video up twice already, but since the mainstream media is pretending that it either doesn’t exist or is the equivalent of one showing a cat getting its head stuck in a jelly jar—come to think of it, they would probably show that—I’m going to keep posting it, and asking you to send it far and wide, until every American with two objective brain cells to rum together can see it and consider what their elected leadership thinks of them.]

Give credit to the Washington Post: four days after a video surfaced in which Affordable Care Act architect Jonathan Gruber told an academic audience that the Affordable Care Act was intentionally written to hide the fact that it was a tax and that the process intentionally avoided transparency to deceive “stupid voters,” it is the only member in good standing of the Mainstream Media Obama Administration Promotion and Defense Club to mention Gruber’s revelations. Not in its print edition, mind you (well, not exactly: more on this in a bit), but online. That’s still an achievement, because as of my writing this, news sources referencing Gruber’s cheery admission that the Administration willfully lied to the American public include: Hot Air, Fox News, The Weekly Standard, The Huffington Post, Mediaite, Politico, The Boston Herald (Boston’s conservative alternative to the Globe), The Washington Times, Bangor News, Forbes, The Free Beacon, The Federalist, The Blaze, National Review, Bloomberg, and the Daily Caller. (Oh: MSNBC, the official Obama shilling network,  put Gruber on to defend himself on friendly turf. His defense? His words were “inappropriate.”)

See a trend? No NPR, CBS, NBC, CNN, ABC, New York Times….it’s a conservative story, you see. Pay no attention, you know how those “baggers” are. They make stuff up, or twist things, or edit tapes to make it look like Democrats and Obama are doing bad things. It’s mostly racism. Bigotry. You don’t want to go there. Stick with us! We’ll tell you the Truth.

The problem with this approach—-which has certainly served Obama well, as the media has largely minimized the damage from multiple scandals and flagrant instances of disastrous incompetence that the same news media would be proclaiming its horror in skywriting if the Administration was headed by a Reagan, Bush or Romney—-is that this one can’t be hidden, won’t go away, and has unavoidable significance. Obamacare is going back to the Supreme Court, you see, and the issue will turn on what the words and the intent of the law is. Will it make a difference that one of the key figures in writing the law—which never went through a House or Senate committee, nor was subjected to floor debate in its final form—admitted, indeed boasted in public that the text of the law was an exercise in obfuscation and deception?  It just might. That makes the video not just news, but big news, news the public has a right to know, news that is fit to print.

Thus this is a journalism scandal as well as a scandal of trust. Continue reading →

More On The Smoking Gun Jonathan Gruber Video

/ Jack Marshall / 124 Comments

Yup, that’s the same video that led off the previous post. Be warned: I may write about this video until everyone here is sick of it, because I might keep writing about it until I see it on MSNBC , discussed on the Daily Kos and examined by Talking Points Memo. I try to keep emotionally detached from the issues I write about (though my favored style of expression may suggest otherwise), because emotion is not conducive to careful and dispassionate ethical analysis. This video, however, enrages me.

It enrages me because it betrays the thinking of an arrogant elite so certain that its wisdom regarding the best policies for the nation that it justifies abandoning the promise and the integrity of democracy as our nation’s Founders devised it. The need for a fully and fairly informed citizenry is at the core of Madison’s structure, and the root of many of our enumerated rights. This is why free speech is essential, and why an unfettered, uncensored press has been given unlimited license. If our elected leaders, however, decide that the proper and effective way to govern is to deceive the public, to hide the truth, to garner public support of measures that the public misunderstands by design, and to gain and retain power through fraud, artifice and lies, there is no democracy, no genuine republic. Such a  government reflects the cynical and anti-democratic values of Lenin, Mao, Hitler, and Big Brother. And like these dictators and liars real and metaphorical, Jon Gruber—and make no mistake: his words reflect exactly the culture of the those he worked with in the White House—sees nothing wrong with this. The ends justify the means, you see, and after all, they are better than us. We’re stupid. They need to deceive us for our own good. Continue reading →