Category Archives: ethics

My Long-Standing Question

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Holman Jenkins opened his op-ed with this paragraph.

In a different political universe Elon Musk’s DOGE wouldn’t be needed. A competent media would be flogging the public sector to provide taxpayers with effective, cost-efficient service. Programs would be examined for their usefulness. It wouldn’t qualify as wanton cruelty if one were determined to be obsolete, as happens in the private sector every day.

I’ll leave aside Jenkins’ journalistic self-importance in presuming members of the journalism guild to be the ones to define “effective” or “cost-efficient.” I’m interested here in his reference to determined to be obsolete, as happens in the private sector every day. Would that he would apply that to his guild, and answer a question I’ve long asked.

1. ID of “anonymous” sources
2. Explanation of why [journalism] has walked away from journalistic standard of corroborating “anonymous” sources with at least two on the record sources
3. Explanation of why we readers should believe “anonymous” sources actually exist
4. On the premise that at least some of the “anonymous” sources do exist, explanation of why we should believe what the source is claiming, given his fundamental dishonesty as demonstrated by his leak, which came at least in violation of his terms of employment if not his oath of office
5. On claims that the leaker is actually a whistle-blower, explanation of why proof was withheld from readers that he exhausted all of his whistle-blower channels before he leaked
6. Regarding 5 above, provision of that proof
7. Identification of the whistle blower, since he needs no anonymity; whistle-blower laws protect him

To which I add, most importantly, given Item 2 above, what publicly accessible, concretely measurable standard of journalistic integrity do today’s editors and news writers use?

An Irrelevancy

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Greenpeace USA has lost the suit brought against it by Energy Transfer over Greenpeace USA’s role in blocking Energy Transfer’s Dakota Pipeline; the court ruled that Greenpeace USA’s actions in its role were illegal destructions, not free speech. Greenpeace USA then has been ordered to pay $660 million in realized and punitive damages to Energy Transfer.

Greenpeace USA argued throughout the damages assessment process and subsequently that

such a ruling could “shut down Greenpeace USA.”

That argument is indicative of Greenpeace’s cynicism and dishonesty. Whether or not any ruling would bankrupt Greenpeace USA is wholly irrelevant. What is relevant, the only things that are relevant, are these: did Greenpeace USA do the deed(s) alleged? If it did, what is the appropriate award that would make Greenpeace USA’s victim whole, and what constitutes a suitable level of punitive damage? In the latter case, was the damage Greenpeace USA inflicted enough to warrant its bankruptcy?

Notice that the latter criterion is not at all a death penalty. Bankruptcy is a means of reorganizing an entity and its debts (not their cancelation) that allows the entity to recover and prosper. So it is with Greenpeace USA. Which that entity knows full well.

What the President’s Staff Thinks about our Allies

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The Wall Street Journal‘s editorial panties are at it again. Now the undergarments are in an uproar over the Signal chat wherein some aspects of an attack on Houthis were discussed just before the attacks went in. The discussion certainly presents bad optics for the administration, and maybe it shouldn’t have been done on Signal.

However.

A real security scandal is that the Signal chat apparently included Steve Witkoff, Mr Trump’s envoy to wars in the Middle East and Ukraine. Press reports say Mr Witkoff was receiving these messages on the commercial app while in Moscow. This is security malpractice. Russian intelligence services must be listening to Mr Witkoff’s every eyebrow flutter.

What the editors chose to omit in their hysteria is that Signal is reputed to a very secure means of group communication; it’s also one explicitly approved for secure communications by the Biden administration. To the extent that Signal is that secure—the editors elide mention of any investigation of this—the Russians could listen in to their heart’s content, but they wouldn’t learn anything, unless they had an agent looking over Witkoff’s shoulder at his phone or laptop.

One more item the editors chose to elide, which came out in so many words in Wednesday’s noon o’clock presser hosted by White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt: Witkoff had no personal communication devices with him on his trip to Mocow. He had only a Federal government-provided secure cell phone provided to him explicitly for the trip. I’m frankly up in the air between these editors being that ignorant of the facts or if, given my nearby post, they’re simply that dishonest in blithely repeating the disinformation of “press reports.”

There’s this overreaction, especially:

Yet Vice President JD Vance second-guessed the President’s strikes on the chat because he said only “3 percent of US trade runs through the suez [sic]” canal, while “40 percent of European trade does.” That understates the US interest in freedom of navigation. Mr Vance even suggested his boss didn’t understand that striking the Houthis was at odds with Mr Trump’s “message on Europe right now.” He added that “I just hate bailing Europe out again.” So the Vice President is willing to let the Houthis shut down shipping to spite the Europeans?

This really is a cynically offered overreaction. For one thing, which the editors omit to mention here, that conversation occurred shortly before Trump made his decision and ordered the strikes to go in. This is staff—Vance—doing its job of devil’s advocating a decision that’s still only potential, even arguing seriously against it while it’s only potential. The editors also omitted to mention that, in that same chat session, Vance said he supported the President’s decision to go ahead: once the boss’s decision was made, argument stopped, and it became everyone’s duty to get behind it and make it work.

For another thing, how well has Pretty Please worked over the last 70 years, or so, in getting Europe to see to its own responsibilities instead of relying primarily if not solely on American blood and treasure for its economic, even political, welfare? Recall that Europe’s NATO members only started getting serious about honoring their commitments to NATO after Trump threatened to leave the organization during his first term, and today a third of Europe’s NATO members continue actively to betray their fellow members with their refusal to honor their duties to the organization. The matter of the Houthis in this conversation is only tangentially related to the overall principle of freedom of navigation.

Vance is far from the only American who’s sick of bailing out Europe. The continent needs to learn, and apparently the only way they will is if they suffer real harm from their determined dependence.

The editors’ remark about being willing to let the Houthis shut down shipping is just cynical exaggeration. The Houthis may be able to severely impact shipping to-from Europe via the Red Sea and the Suez Canal, but that shipping is easily rerouted, and has been, to go around Africa. That’s a route that only a few days longer, and those few days are significant only for shipping from India, Pakistan, or eastern Africa. From farther Asia, which is the bulk of commerce into Europe other than from the United States, the added days are an insignificant delay—and they avoid the toll Egypt charges for the use of its canal.

Money Saved or Wasted?

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Amanda Bennett, ex-previous head of USAGM, is upset with Kari Lake’s (the new head of the US Agency for Global Media) characterization of the $150 million the agency is expected to spend over the next several years on its lease of a new (relative to USAGM’s prior digs) office building.

The prior building that USAGM occupied for a very pretty penny was rundown and rapidly failing further, so Bennet negotiated a good deal for the new office building, and she’s justifiably proud of the deal she got. As far as that deal goes.

The government didn’t lose money [as Lake claimed], it saved—a lot. We estimated that savings over the 15-year lease—including the free rent and millions in cash incentives—would total more than $150 million.

But the USAGM has long been a Leftist propaganda arm, thoroughly deviated from its ROC of passing along factual information, objectively, to other nations, especially those whose governments seek to prevent such data from getting to their subjects.

My question for Bennett, then, is this: how much money would the Federal government save if those $150 million weren’t spent at all and USAGM eliminated from the government’s books?

As the kids like to say, Madam, get real.

Misplaced Understanding

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A woman wrote to a financial advisor with the following problem. She had just linked up with an old high school woman chum and the two were having lunch together; the writer, at least, having a good time catching up on things with her apparently reconnected-with friend. When the check for the lunch came, this happened:

Since this was not a “date” it should have been assumed we would split the bill, right? I never carried cash (still don’t) and pulled out my Amex card to pay my half. To my complete surprise, she stood up and declared (I will NEVER forget this), “Oh, thank you so much for paying! It was great to see you!” and out the door she went.

What to do, she asked the financial advisor, especially now that the incident is in her past but she’s having trouble putting it behind her.

The advisor led off with this:

Your friend could have genuinely believed that you were picking up the tab. It may have been presumptuous, but it could have been a misunderstanding; her mistake was to jump to conclusions prematurely in good faith.

He had this, too:

Your friend sounds like a good egg. [She’s a teacher, and that’s hard.] For all our analysis and reflecting on past matters of financial etiquette, I have a feeling that if we met our respective friends again [the advisor had a similar experience], neither of them would even remember.

No, and no. The first is just rationalization for the subsequent advice. The advisor ignored the fact that the “friend” exited the conversation, the table, and the restaurant as soon as she made her “thanks.” Had the other woman truly misunderstood the treat vice dutch nature of the get together, she would have remained, engaging in further conversation while the credit card was taken away then returned a short time later with the receipt to be signed. Then the two would have left the restaurant together.

Too, of course neither of the two “friends” would remember; they’re the ones who skated.

Here, the woman’s “friend” knew exactly what she was doing; that’s why she didn’t tarry after her words of thanks.

My own advice: forgive the boorishness, but don’t forget it. Evaluate the potentially rebudding relationship, and make a conscious assessment of whether continuing the relationship is worth the other woman’s boorishness. If there’s to be another shared lunch, decide in advance whether the woman will pay; it will be a dutch treat; or the other woman will pay that time, it being, in a way, her turn.