Patterico's Pontifications

5/17/2023

Massachusetts U.S. Attorney Resigns Amid Ethics Questions

Filed under: General — JVW @ 3:05 pm



[guest post by JVW]

Yesterday NRO had an article on the impending resignation of Biden-appointed United States Attorney for Massachusetts, Rachael Rollins, a controversial figure who ascended to her position only after Vice President Kamala Harris broke a tied confirmation vote in the Senate. It turns out that opponents who warned us of the extremist ideology, gross partisanship, and dubious ethics of Ms. Rollins had it exactly right:

Massachusetts U.S. attorney Rachael Rollins plans to resign following multiple federal probes being opened into her appearance at a DNC fundraiser alongside Jill Biden last year.

[. . .]

Last year, the DOJ’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG), an internal watchdog that probes fraud, abuse, and other violations of the DOJ’s policies, opened an investigation into Rollins — an unusual move given her high-ranking law-enforcement position. The U.S. Office of Special Counsel, another watchdog, is also investigating her.

[. . .]

Inspector General Michael Horowitz is also looking into Rollins’s use of her personal cellphone to conduct Department of Justice business, which raises security concerns. Furthermore, the Massachusetts U.S. attorney is being probed for a trip she took to California to speak at an entertainment-industry gathering. An outside group paid for Rollins’s trip despite the fact Department of Justice employees are not supposed to accept payments for travel. Rollins was instructed to pay back the group.

Today the Office of Special Counsel chimed in, and it only got worse for the Bay State attorney:

Rollins, who will resign this week after it became clear the two governmental offices investigating her would release their reports imminently, leaked non-public DOJ information to a reporter in an effort to influence a local DA race and then lied under oath about it — behavior the Office of the Special Counsel termed “one of the most egregious Hatch Act violations that OSC has investigated.”

[. . .]

Both reports [the OSC as well as the Inspector General] detailed Rollins’s effort to influence the 2022 Suffolk County District Attorney election in favor of her preferred candidate, Richard Arroyo. Rollins actively supported Arroyo and acted as a de facto campaign adviser. On multiple occasions during the campaign, Arroyo suggested Rollins’s office might announce an investigation of Kevin Hayden, the incumbent and Arroyo’s rival.

The OSC reports that Ms. Rollins made at least three attempts to spread the rumor that D.A. Hayden was about to be investigated by the Department of Justice. When Mr. Hayden defeated Mr. Arroyo despite meddling from the U.S. Attorney’s office, Ms. Rollins sent a profanity-laden email message to her defeated ally suggesting that Mr. Hayden would soon pay a price. She then contacted a Boston Herald reporter and sent in a copy of a contrived memorandum from her office recusing them from an investigation of Mr. Hayden, leaving the newspaper with the strong impression that an investigation by the DOJ was forthcoming. The Herald naturally published the leaked information. When interviewed by the OSC about her meddling, Ms. Rollins allegedly lied about her involvement. (I write “allegedly” because Ms. Rollins implausibly claims this defamation effort was undertaken by her staff without her knowledge.)

This story dovetails nicely with my post from yesterday, because Ms. Rollins is another government figure whose significance appears to have been her importance as a “first” rather than demonstrated experience or competency in the role. Her distinction as “the first black woman to hold this position” is mentioned in the lead paragraph on her official U.S. Attorney’s Office webpage, so that fact is obviously of tremendous value in Biden World. I’m not suggesting that Rachael Rollins was named to the position solely because she is a black woman — no doubt her hug a criminal and fire a cop outlook, so popular among the progressive legal elite these days, played a huge part in landing her the role too.

One of the clear priorities of the Biden Administration has been to placate various factions of the fractious and freaky Democrat caucus by implementing a policy of quotas and set-asides for a number of jobs in government, and then trying to pass it off as casting a wide net in the name of diversity. But when this monomaniacal fixation yields major incompetents in key position such as the Vice-Presidency itself, it’s obviously counterproductive. Previous Democrat Presidents like Bill Clinton and Barack Obama certainly valued having various races, ethnicities, and sexual orientations represented among their appointments, and even Republicans such as George W. Bush and Donald Trump aspired to bring in supporters from all walks of life. But these crazy times combined with the utter empty-mindedness of President Biden and the gross cynicism of whomever is pulling his strings has turned “diversity” into a fetish, and it has given us an unambiguous Quota Cabinet heavily staffed with mediocrities and incompetents. Yet they wonder why people’s faith in government continues to drop.

– JVW

2/8/2021

Judge: Gascón’s Policies Are Unlawful and Force Deputy D.A.’s to Violate Their Ethics

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 8:25 pm



Today Judge James Chalfant issued a ruling in a lawsuit brought by the Los Angeles Association of Deputy District Attorneys against Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascón, challenging many of the District Attorney’s recent policies. The decision was a nearly complete victory for the ADDA.

The Special Directives require prosecutors to violate California law, their oaths of office, and their ethical and professional obligations. The Special Directives violate the Three Strikes law by prohibiting prosecutors from pleading and proving prior convictions in new cases. Prosecutors have a ministerial duty to allege all prior convictions under the Three Strikes law. Respondents refuse to perform this duty. The Special Directives also require deputy district attorneys to wrongly argue that the mandatory obligation to plead and prove strikes is unconstitutional as violative of the separation of powers.

. . . .

The District Attorney’s disregard of the Three Strikes “plead and prove” requirement is unlawful, as is requiring deputy district attorneys to seek dismissal of pending sentencing enhancements without a lawful basis.

Paid subscribers to my newsletter, the Constitutional Vanguard, were ahead of the curve on this one. I put out a newsletter last night with a prediction about the outcome of the lawsuit. Tonight I sent paid subscribers a missive in which I assessed my predictions in detail. You’ll have to subscribe to see whether my predictions were correct, but I’ll give you a little hint: the title of tonight’s missive is Who Is Writing This Newsletter? Patterico? Or Carnac the Magnificent?

(Always trust content from Patterico!)

The extent of the accuracy of my predictions amazed even me. Just think: you too could be getting that kind of insight delivered directly to your inbox. (And if we build up a base of subscribers, we can have exclusive discussions among civilized people.)

What are you waiting for? Subscribe now.

3/20/2020

Ethics Of Rationing Health Care If System Becomes Overwhelmed

Filed under: General — Dana @ 6:26 pm



[guest post by Dana]

In light of the pandemic and the limited number of ventilators available nationwide, inevitable discussions about the prioritizing of treatment if the system becomes overwhelmed, have begun. From The Los Angeles Times:

Three patients — a 16-year-old boy with diabetes, a 25-year-old mother and a 75-year-old grandfather — are crammed into a hospital triage tent and struggling to breathe. Only one ventilator is left. Who gets it?

Do they allocate intensive-care beds on a first-come, first-served basis? Do they pull one patient with a limited chance of survival off a ventilator to give it to another with better odds?

If two patients have equal medical need and likelihood of recovery, do they pick the youngest? Or the one with the greatest number of dependents? Should physicians and respiratory therapists, or even police officers and firefighters, be jumped to the front of the line?

With the upward trajectory of Americans testing positive for coronavirus, medical professionals are faced with decisions about who should receive treatment if there is a very limited number of ventilators and hospital beds available. In the U.S., we are at the discussion and planning stages. In Italy, planning is long over with – the hard decisions are already being made:

Without enough ventilators to deal with the influx of patients, doctors are denying services to the elderly in favor of young and otherwise healthy patients.

“There is no way to find an exception,” a doctor in northern Italy told the New England Journal of Medicine. “We have to decide who must die and whom we shall keep alive.”

To see the problem in the starkest of terms, Johns Hopkins reports that the U.S. has fewer than 100,000 intensive-care beds. But it would probably need a total of 200,000 in a moderate outbreak and 2.9 million in an outbreak akin to the 1918 Spanish flu.

In Washington state, which has been hit extremely hard by the outbreak, about 280 clinicians and officials from across the state, participated in a conference call concerning the difficult subject of prioritizing treatment of patients if the system becomes overwhelmed:

Fearing a critical shortage of supplies, including the ventilators needed to help the most seriously ill patients breathe, state officials and hospital leaders held a conference call on Wednesday night to discuss the plans, according to several people involved in the talks. The triage document, still under consideration, will assess factors such as age, health and likelihood of survival in determining who will get access to full care and who will merely be provided comfort care, with the expectation that they will die.

Cassie Sauer, chief executive of the Washington State Hospital Association, said that the decision was being made statewide in order to keep individual doctors from having to make the difficult decision:

“It’s protecting the clinicians so you don’t have one person who’s kind of playing God,” she said, adding, “It is chilling, and it should not happen in America.”

Dr. Chris Spitters, interim health officer for the Snohomish Health District, explained that medical professionals will be better off having an actual plan in place, rather than just hoping it gets better:

“I would love to learn a month from now that the social distancing measures we adopted did indeed curb the outbreak enough to avoid going into that crisis zone of activity,” Dr. Spitters said. “But that would be poor planning — to simply hope.”

Determining the criteria:

“They look at the criteria — in this case it would likely be age and underlying disease conditions — and then determine that this person, though this person has a chance of survival with a ventilator, does not get one,” Ms. Sauer said.

“This is a shift to caring for the population, where you look at the whole population of people who need care and make a determination about who is most likely to survive, and you provide care to them,” she said. “Those that have a less good chance of survival — but still have a chance — you do not provide care to them, which guarantees their death.”

Fordham University’s Charles Camosy, who is an associate professor of theological and social ethics, and whose work focuses on ethics and policy, explains why he disagrees with making any rationing decisions based soley upon age:

The Italians have already faced the bedeviling moral dilemmas of rationing, and in a guidance to providers, the Italian government has recommended that resources be rationed by age… age-based rationing is “a way to provide extremely scarce resources to those who have the highest likelihood of survival and could enjoy the largest number of life-years saved.”

Bioethicists like me disagree over which values should guide rationing, but we generally agree about focusing on those who can benefit from the treatment. If the age of a patient makes it unlikely she would benefit, the hard truth is that limited resources will likely go to someone else.

But then there is the “number of life years” the patient could “enjoy,” as the Italians put it. This consideration comes from providers’ growing tendency to think either implicitly or explicitly about how many “quality-adjusted life years” their interventions might produce. It is a poisonously utilitarian and inherently discriminatory mentality. It is ageist — discriminatory against the elderly — and ableist — discriminatory against the disabled — to its core.

He then explains the danger of using a “quality of life’ argument: we know that throughout Europe, it is believed that babies born with Down syndrome are deemed so without quality of life that they are better off not having been born at all (see: Iceland):

But anyone who loves someone with Down syndrome knows that they are some of the most joyful people on earth. What if a corona victim competing for a bed or ventilator has Down syndrome? Even some US hospitals are considering using “quality of life” as part of their rationing process.

So who should make the decision about care rationing?

It should not be up to physicians to decide whose subjective quality of life deserves to be prolonged. Physicians almost always rate the quality of life of their patients significantly lower than patients do themselves — and miss the fact that their patients often prefer length of life to quality of life (whatever that means). In short, they are terrible deciders about who should live and who should die.

Camosy points readers to protocols established in 2008 by the state of New York, in case of a pandemic likethe one we are currently facing. “Allocation of Ventilators in a Public Health Disaster” informs decision-makers that “age and health problems or disabilities unrelated to what is causing the epidemic shouldn’t serve as the basis for rationing. Prognosis for recovery is what matters.”

In other words:

A New York hospital could choose to give its last ventilator to the 72-year-old marathon runner rather than to the 57-year-old pack-a-day smoker. Again, based only on prognosis for recovery. The objectivity of the standard removes much of the physician’s subjective ideology from the picture.

The protocol also says that the public should make sure our views are reflected in state and hospital policies when an epidemic hits. We are late to the party, but there is no time like the present to be heard and hold the health-care community to transparent ethical standards.

Again, physicians and hospitals are doing heroic work under traumatic conditions. We are beyond blessed to have them. But it is in supremely difficult conditions like the current one when cultures tend to abandon their core values.

If rationing arrives, we must stand up unambiguously for the marginalized and vulnerable, the elderly and disabled, lest what Pope Francis has decried as the modern throwaway culture deems them expendable.

Prayerfully, it doesn’t come to this.

–Dana

12/16/2017

Irony: Office of Congressional Ethics Staff Director Accused of Sexual Misconduct

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 11:22 am



[Guest post by Dana]

In light of the current flurry of elected officials being accused of sexual misconduct (and making payouts using taxpayer money), it is an ironic slap in the face of Americans to find out that a high-ranking official, whose job is to investigate accusations of sexual misconduct against lawmakers, is himself being sued in federal court for physical and sexual harassment of several women — as well as using his powerful position to influence law enforcement responsible for the investigation into the matter:

Omar Ashmawy, staff director and chief counsel of the Office of Congressional Ethics, is heavily involved in determining which allegations brought against lawmakers warrant an ethics committee probe.

Ashmawy, who signed off on the ethics investigation into Democratic Rep. John Conyers of Michigan among others, was allegedly assaulted by three men after repeatedly sexually harassing women in a Milford, Penn., bar on Valentines Day in 2015.

One of the men, Greg Martucci, is suing Ashmawy in federal court for, among other things, “threatening to use his position as staff director and chief counsel of the Office of Congressional Ethics to induce a criminal proceeding to be brought against Plaintiff and/or others,” according to court inflatable movie screen filings obtained by Foreign Policy.

Ashmawy denies that he harassed any women that night, and says the assault was unprovoked: “To be clear, I did not harass anyone that evening, physically or verbally,” he wrote in a statement to FP. “To the contrary, I was the victim of a wholly unprovoked assault for which those responsible were investigated, arrested and charged. Any allegation to the contrary is unequivocally false.”

However, witnesses at the bar and the alleged victims corroborated Martucci’s accusation that Ashmawy had behaved in an “extremely violent and belligerent” manner toward several women that night:

Dawn Jorgensen corroborated much of what Martucci alleges in his suit in a written statement provided to police. She claims she saw Martucci “clearly sexually harassing” [Joey Lynn] Smith during successive trips to the bar to order drinks.

“You’ll give me drinks, but you won’t fuck me,” Ashmawy said to Smith before physically blocking her escape and grabbing her, according to Dawn Jorgensen’s statement. At that point, Dawn Jorgensen said she tried to intervene, at which point Ashmawy allegedly grabbed her wrist and fell on top of her.

[Christina] Floyd confirmed much of what Dawn Jorgensen alleged in her own statement to the police.

“I watched each time Omar would come down and verbally sexually harass the bartender as he ordered drinks,” Floyd wrote in her statement, describing Ashmawy.”

After witnessing the altercation, bar owner John Jorgensen (who is also the husband of Dawn Jorgensen), Martucci, and another individual took Ashmawy out back to the woodshed where, according to Ashmawy’s statement, he was left with a “bruised and bloody eye.” Oddly, in spite of the written statements by the alleged victims, no charges of sexual assault or harassment have been filed against Ashmawy.

Piggybacking on the theme of “ethics” and officials behaving badly, Rep. Ruben Kihuen (D-Nev.) is currently facing an investigation concerning his alleged sexual misconduct involving two women:

The House Ethics Committee announced Friday that it has launched an investigation into the conduct of Rep. Ruben Kihuen (D-Nev.) amid allegations that he sexually harassed an employee on his 2016 congressional campaign and a lobbyist during his time as a state legislator.

Nancy Pelosi has called on Kihuen to resign several times, based on the accusation by the lobbyist that: “…Kihuen touched her thighs and buttocks without consent and sent her hundreds of suggestive text messages, which the Nevada] Independent reviewed.”

Kihuen has declined to step down, stating that he wants to “go through the ethics process.”

Meanwhile, Rep. Blake Farenthold (R-Tx.), who is also the subject of a House Ethics Committee investigation, announced that rather than step down from his position, he has decided instead not to run for reelection after it had been revealed that he had “settled a lurid sexual harassment claim with his former communications director for $84,000,” and faces accusations from two former press secretaries who claimed he had “an explosive temper, berate them repeatedly, made sexually explicit jokes and engaged in casual sexual banter that set a tone followed by his underlings.”

And as a reminder, Sen. Al Franken (D-Mn.) has not yet stepped down after facing numerous allegations of sexual misconduct. The senator also remains baffled about how those women’s bottoms ended up in his unwilling hands. However, according to a report out today, the Democrat will be gone in early January when Lt. Gov. Tina Smith is scheduled to take over his seat.

In the midst of numerous allegations against officials, and resignations by some of them, Speaker Paul Ryan has had enough of these shenanigans, especially when it involves taxpayer money:

House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) said Wednesday that Congress plans to stop using taxpayer dollars to settle sexual harassment cases against lawmakers.

When asked whether Congress would stop using taxpayer dollars to settle these cases, Ryan replied, “Yes, that’s among the things we’re working on right now.”

Ryan added that he agrees with Weber’s assertion that using taxpayer dollars to settle harassment claims is “indefensible.”

While both the House and the Senate have voted to implement sexual harassment training for all members of Congress and staffers, reforms on how Congress should handle accusations of sexual misconduct are also in the works. One hopes that all the decision-makers bear in mind that these lawmakers who have behaved badly are adults who already know that sexual harassment and assault is not only wrong but also illegal. However, like small children, they behave in such an unacceptable manner because they know they can get away with it. And no amount of sexual harassment training can change that. As such, it will be interesting to see whether the new reforms have any actual teeth to them.

Final point: if this teaser has any merit to it, those reforms should be put in place much sooner rather than later.

Also, any official that has used taxpayer money to make secret settlements should be publicly named, to promote a more transparent government.

— Dana

2/9/2017

Kellyanne Conway Touts Ivanka Trump’s Clothing Line from White House, Apparently Violating Ethics Rules

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 10:00 am



This gang just can’t help themselves, can they? Here’s the video. The plug for the President’s daughter’s line of clothing comes at 1:11:

Go buy Ivanka’s stuff, is what I would tell you. I hate shopping, I’m gonna go get some myself today.

5 CFR [Code of Federal Regulations] 2635.702 states in relevant part:

§ 2635.702 Use of public office for private gain.

An employee shall not use his public office for his own private gain, for the endorsement of any product, service or enterprise, or for the private gain of friends, relatives, or persons with whom the employee is affiliated in a nongovernmental capacity, including nonprofit organizations of which the employee is an officer or member, and persons with whom the employee has or seeks employment or business relations.

Nothing will come of this, because we collectively shrug our shoulders at ethical violations these days. It began with President Trump inappropriately tweeting out an angry message about Nordstrom’s decision — which it said was based on financial considerations — to terminate Ivanka’s line of clothing. (I guess Nordstrom should lose money to keep the cash flowing to Ivanka.) Then it was Sean Spicer saying the decision was “unacceptable.” Now we have Kellyanne Conway, Counselor to the President, standing in the White House briefing room, openly plugging the financial interests of the President’s daughter.

It’s not the biggest thing in the world on its own, but it’s indicative of a rotten culture. They don’t think twice about doing stuff like this. Ethics? Schmethics.

Of course, none of this is really about money. It’s about ego. Donald Trump’s ego is now the Prime Mover in all American policy. This is just another example.

[Cross-posted at RedState and The Jury Talks Back.]

1/16/2017

Two Stories About Trump, Wild-Eyed Trump Supporters, and Ethics

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 12:07 pm



Two items for your reading pleasure.

ITEM ONE: CROWLEY OUT

Monica Crowley is out, for pulling a Melania Trump. (Dana has her own take on this here.)

GOP foreign policy adviser Monica Crowley said Monday she will relinquish the senior job she’d been poised to take in the Trump White House.

Ms. Crowley, who had been tapped to be senior director of strategic communications at the National Security Council, had been dogged in recent weeks by questions about whether she lifted portions of her past written work from other writers. Her move seemed designed to keep that from becoming a distraction as the Trump team prepares to take office.

“After much reflection I have decided to remain in New York to pursue other opportunities and will not be taking a position in the incoming administration,” she said in a statement. “I greatly appreciate being asked to be part of President-elect Trump’s team and I will continue to enthusiastically support him and his agenda for American renewal.”

It’s kind, if inaccurate, for the Washington Times to describe the controversy as “questions about whether she lifted portions of her past written work.” It was the strongest case of pulling a Melania Trump since Melania Trump.

I’m pleased to see that Donald Trump does not want someone with such poor ethical standards in his White House. If there’s anything more important to Donald Trump than decorum, it’s ethics.

ITEM TWO: GATEWAY PUNDIT’S VICTORY DANCE

Item two: Jim Hoft’s blog Gateway Pundit (admittedly through another writer named Ryan Saavedra) declares RedState.com to be the worst of the worst:

RedState had a rough year after backing failed GOP candidates, trashing Donald Trump for months and losing audience and respect in conservative circles.

Now a writer from Red State has come completely unhinged attacking The Drudge Report, The Gateway Pundit, Dinesh D’Souza and Sarah Palin.

. . . .

Kimberly Ross represents everything that is wrong with the Republican party and people on the right.

Ross was criticizing Hoft, Palin, etc. because of this piece from the Washington Post explaining how Hoft, Palin, and Drudge pushed a totally bogus story:

Trolls decided I was taking pictures of Rex Tillerson’s notes. I wasn’t even there.

What it’s like to be at the center of a fake-news conspiracy theory.

By Doris Truong

There’s a joke among Asian Americans that people think we all look the same. That joke became my own personal Pizzagate late Wednesday: I got caught in a terrible case of mistaken identity that was exacerbated by the speed at which false information spreads on social media.

I work as a homepage editor at The Washington Post. Because Wednesday was my day off, I hadn’t been online much. But before I went to bed, I noticed a message request on Facebook. Someone I didn’t know asked: “Any comment on you taking photos of Rex Tillerson’s notes?” When I checked Twitter, I had to scroll for several minutes to figure out what was going on. It seemed to start with this post: “Who is this woman and why is she secretly snapping photos of Rex Tillerson’s notes?”

. . . .

I lost track of the tweets, retweets and variations of tweets, including some with my Twitter handle superimposed on a photo from the hearing. People demanded my firing and questioned my ethics as a journalist. Top editors at The Post had heard about it. The false narrative snowballed early Thursday because a Gateway Pundit post was picked up by the Drudge Report.

Even Sarah Palin tweeted it.

Here is the Gateway Pundit post. Sample:

Wow! Reporter Caught Sneaking Photos of Rex Tillerson’s Notes at Senate Hearing (VIDEO) –Updated

Jim Hoft Jan 11th, 2017 11:28 pm 591 Comments

The Liberal Media Becomes More Unhinged by the Day–
A reporter was caught on film sneaking photos of Secretary of State nominee Rex Tillerson’s personal notes at his hearing today before the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee today in Washington DC.

The reporter obviously forgot about the cameras running on Tillerson’s seat during the break.
Now the entire world knows she’s a thief.
What an idiot.

Skipping over the update, where Hoft is forced to acknowledge he got the story completely wrong, we see the origin of the story: one Mike Cernovich.

Via Mike Cernovich:

Cernovich to Hoft to Drudge — that’s how “facts” circulate in our wonderful Trumpy New Media.

All Kimberly Ross from RedState did was . . . criticize this incredibly sloppy reporting.

In Gateway Pundit world, the lesson learned from all this is: check out your stories before printing them RedState is terrible for criticizing a fellow Republican and not supporting Trump at all times — that’s why I get clicks and they don’t, hahahahahaha!

Remember, Hoft might do something stupid and embarrassing like that every week or so, usually accompanied by ALL CAPS AND MULTIPLE EXCLAMATION POINTS!!!!!!!!!!!!!! . . . but he’s a Trump supporter and RedState isn’t. He predicted Trump would win and RedState didn’t. Therefore, he is the New Paragon of our media, and deserves your clicks, no matter how shitty and riddled with errors his posts might be.

So there are your two stories. In one, the Trump administration surprisingly upholds an ethical standard. In the second, his supporters throw ethical standards to the wind, and attack anyone who criticizes them for it.

The first story is a little surprising, since the Trump transition team could have defended Crowley and called the allegations against her politically motivated. (Oh, wait, that’s what they did, just one week ago, after the PhD dissertation scandal had just broken.)

Despite the news, the Trump team continues to support the appointment. “Any attempt to discredit Monica is nothing more than a politically motivated attack that seeks to distract from the real issues facing this country,” a transition spokesperson told CNN.

I’ll take it as a hopeful sign that this sort of utterly dishonest response — which was doubtless applauded by the very same crowd that pushed the bogus Truong story — did not ultimately carry the day.

P.S. Folks ought to bookmark this story, because the Washington Post reporter uses the term “fake news,” not to describe knowingly fake news, but rather to describe a situation where people believed they were telling the truth, but got it horribly wrong through lazy and slipshod analysis filled with unwarranted assumptions based on partisanship. I don’t think this usage is accurate, because I think “fake news” should be reserved for actual fake news put out by people who know it’s fake. But many conservatives have been using the term that way to describe similarly inaccurate stories by Big Media — and now the Washington Post is using that same definition itself, which is a notable development.

If “fake news” has that broad a definition, then the Washington Post‘s own “Russia hacked the power grid” story was “fake news.” I wouldn’t have called it that, myself — but under their own definition, that’s what it is.

P.P.S. This should be obvious, but the reference to “wild-eyed Trump supporters” in the headline is not meant to declare that all Trump supporters are wild-eyed. It is meant to distinguish the wild-eyed ones (like Hoft and Cernovich) from those that aren’t (which is the vast majority of them, in my opinion).

UPDATE: Excellent post by Kimberly Ross at RedState calling out Gateway Pundit for repeatedly peddling bogus stories.

1/12/2017

Head of Ethics Agency Says Trump’s Plan Won’t Address Conflicts of Interest

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 9:55 pm



He’s criticizing Trump. Swarm him.

P.S. He says Rex Tillerson is doing a good job.

1/11/2017

Trump’s Ethics Plan Is Unethical

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 5:44 pm



Allahpundit explains why. But nobody cares, so I am just noting it for the record. Commenters’ predictable defenses have all been aired already, and I see no reason to re-hash it, so I’m closing comments on this one.

UPDATE: Dana has asked me to open comments, and I am doing so at her request.

6/8/2015

A Smart Response To A Misguided Complaint About Work Ethics

Filed under: General — Dana @ 5:57 am



[guest post by Dana]

Mike Rowe, host of Discovery Channel’s Dirty Jobs and CNN’s Somebody’s Gotta Do It, and champion of the everyday worker in America, responded to a complaint on his Facebook page:

Hey Mike

Your constant harping on “work ethic” is growing tiresome. Just because someone’s poor doesn’t mean they’re lazy. The unemployed want to work! And many of those who can’t find work today, didn’t have the benefit of growing up with parents like yours. How can you expect someone with no role model to qualify for one of your scholarships or sign your silly “Sweat Pledge?” Rather than accusing people of not having a work-ethic, why not drop the right-wing propaganda and help them develop one?

Craig P.

Here is Rowe’s response in full:

Hi Craig, and Happy Sunday!

I’m afraid you’ve overestimated the reach of my foundation, as well as my ability to motivate people I’ve never met. For the record, I don’t believe all poor people are lazy, any more than I believe all rich people are greedy. But I can understand why so many do.

Everyday on the news, liberal pundits and politicians portray the wealthy as greedy, while conservative pundits and politicians portray the poor as lazy. Democrats have become so good at denouncing greed, Republicans now defend it. And Republicans are so good at condemning laziness, Democrats are now denying it even exists. It’s a never ending dance that gets more contorted by the day.

A few weeks ago in Georgetown, President Obama accused Fox News of “perpetuating a false narrative” by consistently calling poor people “lazy.” Fox News denied the President’s accusation, claiming to have only criticized policies, not people. Unfortunately for Fox, The Daily Show has apparently gained access to the Internet, and after a ten-second google-search and a few minutes in the edit bay, John Stewart was on the air with a devastating montage of Fox personnel referring to the unemployed as “sponges,” “leeches,” “freeloaders,” and “mooches.” http://www.washingtonpost.com/…/daily-shows-jon-stewart-bu…/

Over the next few days, the echo chamber got very noisy. The Left howled about the bias at Fox and condemned the one-percent, while the Right shrieked about the bias at MSNBC and bemoaned the growing entitlement state. But through all the howling and shrieking, no one said a word about the millions of jobs that American companies are struggling to fill right now. No one talked the fact that most of those jobs don’t require an expensive four-year degree. And no one mentioned the 1.2 trillion dollars of outstanding student loans, or the madness of lending money we don’t have to kids who can’t pay it back, educating them for jobs that no longer exist.

I started mikeroweWORKS to talk about these issues, and shine a light on a few million good jobs that no one seems excited about. But mostly, I wanted to remind people that real opportunity still exists for those individuals who are willing to work hard, learn a skill, and make a persuasive case for themselves. Sadly, you see my efforts as “right wing propaganda.” But why? Are our differences really political? Or is it something deeper? Something philosophical?

You wrote that, “people want to work.” In my travels, I’ve met a lot of hard-working individuals, and I’ve been singing their praises for the last 12 years. But I’ve seen nothing that would lead me to agree with your generalization. From what I’ve seen of the species, and what I know of myself, most people – given the choice – would prefer NOT to work. In fact, on Dirty Jobs, I saw Help Wanted signs in every state, even at the height of the recession. Is it possible you see the existence of so many unfilled jobs as a challenge to your basic understanding of what makes people tick?

Last week at a policy conference in Mackinac, I talked to several hiring managers from a few of the largest companies in Michigan. They all told me the same thing – the biggest under reported challenge in finding good help, (aside from the inability to “piss clean,”) is an overwhelming lack of “soft skills.” That’s a polite way of saying that many applicants don’t tuck their shirts in, or pull their pants up, or look you in the eye, or say things like “please” and “thank you.” This is not a Michigan problem – this is a national crisis. We’re churning out a generation of poorly educated people with no skill, no ambition, no guidance, and no realistic expectations of what it means to go to work.

These are the people you’re talking about Craig, and their number grows everyday. I understand you would like me to help them, but how? I’m not a mentor, and my foundation doesn’t do interventions. Do you really want me to stop rewarding individual work ethic, just because I don’t have the resources to assist those who don’t have any? If I’m unable to help everyone, do you really want me to help no one?

My goals are modest, and they’ll remain that way. I don’t focus on groups. I focus on individuals who are eager to do whatever it takes to get started. People willing to retool, retrain, and relocate. That doesn’t mean I have no empathy for those less motivated. It just means I’m more inclined to subsidize the cost of training for those who are. That shouldn’t be a partisan position, but if it is, I guess I’ll just have to live with it.

–Dana

8/18/2014

Los Angeles: Let’s Pay Voters To Vote Suggests The Los Angeles Ethics Commission

Filed under: General — Dana @ 6:59 pm



[guest post by Dana]

Concerned about low voter turnout in local elections, the city’s Ethics Commission has come up with a winning idea: pay people to vote!

On a 3-0 vote, the panel said it wanted City Council President Herb Wesson’s Rules, Elections and Intergovernmental Relations Committee to seriously consider the use of financial incentives and a random drawing during its elections, possibly as soon as next year.

Depending on the source of city funds, the idea could require a ballot measure. Commissioners said they were unsure how big the prizes should be or how many should be offered, saying a pilot program should first be used to test the concept.

“Maybe it’s $25,000 maybe it’s $50,000,” said Commission President Nathan Hochman. “That’s where the pilot program comes in — to figure out what … number and amount of prizes would actually get people to the voting box.”

The legalities of such a decision were also addressed:

Ethics Commissioner Jessica Levinson, an attorney and professor at Loyola Law School, said the city should not have to wait until the end of the decade to take steps to improve voter participation. “We have turnout in citywide elections in the high teens and low 20s and I think that’s pretty dismal,” she said.

Federal law prohibits people from accepting payment in exchange for voting. But Levinson, who voted to pursue the lottery concept, contends that statute would not apply in an election where there are no federal positions on the ballot. California law prohibits people from using money or gifts to ensure that voters cast ballots for any particular person or measure. Money also cannot be used to keep people from voting in a particular election, according to information provided by the secretary of state’s office.

Apathetic non-voters clearly do not care enough about the candidates and legislative issues to use their privilege to vote. If the possibility of winning money draws these voters in, does anyone believe they would be casting a learned and informed vote as opposed to just filling in a ballot to win some prize money? Hm, more low-informed voters… who benefits from that?

Don’t worry, an Ethics Commission member reassures:

“When you do have these types of systems people do end up educating themselves before they go to the polls.”

–Dana

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