Year: 2011

Exposing America’s Dungeons: The New York City Bar Report on Supermax Prisons

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

“…The overriding rationale for supermax confinement is to impose order  and maintain safety in the prison environment.  The unmitigated suffering caused by supermax confinement, however, cannot be justified by the argument that it is an effective means to deal with difficult prisoners. The issue, we believe, is not whether supermax achieves its purposes or is effective at controlling and punishing unruly inmates.
Instead, the question is whether the vast archipelago of American supermax facilities, in which some prisoners are kept isolated indefinitely for years, should be tolerated as consistent with fundamental principles of justice. Even prisoners who have committed horrific crimes and atrocities possess basic rights to humane treatment under national and international law. Although the Constitution “does not mandate comfortable prisons,” it does require humane prisons that comport with the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition against punishments that are “incompatible with ‘the evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society” or which “involve the unnecessary and wanton infliction of pain.” More recently, the Supreme Court stated that “[p]risoners retain the essence of human dignity inherent in all persons. Respect for that dignity animates the Eighth Amendment prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment.”

“Supermax confinement as extensively implemented in the United States falls short of this standard and must be substantially reformed.”

—-The New York City Bar in its just-released report on “supermax” prisons in the United States.  The report declares supermax imprisonment, which currently holds 80,000 prisoners, to be the equivilent of torture and a violation of international human rights standards.

The report is harrowing, horrifying, and a source of shame for all Americans. The lack of concern by the public and its elected representatives in maintaining humane conditions in our prisons is understandable but inexcusable nonetheless. The New York City Bar has performed  a great service by issuing the report; it is up to us to insist that it is acted upon without delay. The United States of America should not be operating dungeons.

You can, and must, read it here.

Ethics Quiz: Does The Golden Rule Ever Make You a Sucker?

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

For Ken Anderson, an alternative tattoo instead of "Mother"

With great trepidation, I visit our friends to the North for the second time in a week…this time, for an Ethics Quiz.

Ken Anderson, 47, of British Columbia, has been fighting a lawsuit by his aged mother, Shirley Anderson, since 2000. Using a rarely used section of B.C.’s Family Relations Act, she is demanding that he pay her $750 per month in “parental support.” The law declares that adult children are responsible for legally supporting parents who are “dependent on a child because of age, illness, infirmity or economic circumstances.”

Anderson isn’t keen on the request, since both his parents abandoned him when he was a mere tyke of 15, leaving him behind as they moved away with two younger siblings. He lived with other families and then quit school to find work. Now he’s married with two kids, and makes his living driving a truck. Continue reading →

Why Doesn’t This Government Ethics Alarm Go Off…Or Does It Even Exist?

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

"Let's see...cheese on a Ritz, or Beef Wellington...Hell, let's spring for the Wellington--everyone OK with that?"

I just don’t understand it. I never have.

In a report released today, the Justice Department’s inspector general revealed that U.S. Justice Department agencies spent absurd amounts for lavish food at conferences, in one case serving $16 muffins, in another dishing out beef Wellington appetizers that cost $7.32 per serving, and in yet another, a March 2009 conference of the Office on Violence Against Women, serving Cracker Jacks, popcorn and candy bars at a single break to the tune of $32 per person. Yum!

The abuse isn’t unique to the Obama Administration, but it has gotten worse. The inspector general reviewed a sample of ten Justice Department conferences held between October 2007 and September 2009 at a cost of $4.4 million, a period that included the administrations of Republican George W. Bush and Democrat Barack Obama. The Justice Department spent $73.3 million on conferences in fiscal 2009, compared with $47.8 million a year earlier, according to the report. Continue reading →

Law, Ethics, and the One-legged Baby Who Never Should Have Lived But Is Glad He Did

/ Jack Marshall / 24 Comments

It's a wonderful, wrongful, life. Wait..what?

A Palm Beach County jury has awarded $4.5 million to couple Ana Mejia and Rodolfo Santana in an unusual “wrongful life” lawsuit.  Their child Bryan was born with only one limb, a leg, and their lawsuit on his behalf alleged that Dr. Marie Morel and OB/GYN Specialists of the Palm Beaches Hospital botched an ultra-sound procedure that should have detected the abnormality.If it had accurately told them what Bryan would be like, they argued, they would have had him aborted.

The jury-awarded damages will cover prostheses, wheelchairs, operations, attendants and other needs it is assumed that Bryan will have during his estimated 70-year life.  “It will give piece of mind to these people that no matter what happens to them, their son will be all right,” Mejia’s attorney told the jury.

The legal issues are interesting; the ethical issues  more so. Continue reading →

The History Channel’s Unethical Science Fiction

/ Jack Marshall / 44 Comments

Apparently cable TV needs some basic ethics rules, particularly focusing on integrity. SyFy, the science fiction channel, includes professional wrestling prominently in its programming, as well as movies that qualify as horror or fantasy but have no science, fictional or otherwise, in evidence. Chiller, the horror channel, includes movies that are pure suspense or science fiction, as well as re-runs of the reality show “Fear Factor,” which would belong on the Stupid Channel if there was one (other than E!, of course.) This week, a religious program was on Chiller; I have no idea what that was about. Meanwhile, The Learning Channel has become the Child Exploitation Channel, led by the “Jon  & Kate plus 8” franchise, spin-offs and imitators. What are we learning? Not much, except that the names of cable channels mean little or nothing.

Nevertheless, while it is sloppy and false branding to show “Apollo 13” on the SyFy channel, it is considerably worse to show fiction and fantasy on The History Channel, which is what The History Channel has been featuring recently with “Ancient Aliens,” a series that presents the wacko theory that aliens visited Earth centuries ago as fact. Continue reading →

Now THIS Is Hypocrisy!

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick, the Happy Hypocrite

In its continuing effort to help illustrate the proper use of the words “hypocrite” and “hypocrisy” for those journalists, pundits, politicians, activists and members of the public who seem to have difficulty with the concepts, Ethics Alarms presents another installment of “Now THIS is Hypocrisy!” (or, as it is sometimes called, “Now That’s Hypocrisy!”) Today’s tale:

After personally declaring that this was Car-Free Week in Massachusetts,the Bay State’s governor, Deval Patrick, got caught commuting to work from his Milton home in an SUV. Supported by Governor Patrick, Massachusetts transportation officials are urging residents to embrace Car-Free week as an opportunity to “promote the environmental, financial, community and health benefits of using public transportation, carpooling, bicycling, walking and teleworking.”

“You got me,” a smiling Patrick told reporters. Ha ha. Not funny, Governor. The public already believes that its elected officials have no intention of living by the laws, rules and principles they piously impose on others, and such blatant, arrogant, unnecessary and stupid hypocrisy just serves to worsen an already festering wound on the public trust.

After chuckling his disgrace away, Patrick told reporters he hoped residents would not follow his lead.

Good advice, Governor! You lack integrity, common sense and respect for the intelligence of your state’s residents, and you are obviously a boob. Why should they follow your lead?

Ever.

Now that’s hypocrisy.

The Dominatrix Lawyer Principle?

/ Jack Marshall / 19 Comments

"Your witness, Counsellor."

Alisha Smith, 36, by day a lawyer in the state Attorney General’s Office specializing in prosecuting securities fraud, prowls the night as “Alisha Spark,” a dominatrix who performs at S&M events for pay. So reports an expose in the New York Post. At a recent S&M event, Alisha posed for photos with fellow fetishists, wearing a skin-tight, see-through latex dress with heart-shaped pasties.“They pay her to go to the events. She dominates people, restrains them and whips them,” the Post’s source said.

Yesterday, the Attorney General removed Smith from her duties. “The employee has been suspended without pay, effective immediately, pending an internal investigation,” said a spokesman for state Attorney General Eric Schneiderman. The lawyer-dominatrix’s punishment, which will may eventually involve dismissal, will undoubtedly be based on a standing executive order in the Attorney General’s Office that requires employees to “obtain prior approval from the [Employment Conduct Committee] before engaging in any outside pursuit … from which more than $1,000 will be received or is anticipated to be received.”

Whipping enthusiastic S&M lovers pays a lot better than that.

She should be dismissed anyway. Her activities breach no legal ethics rules, but as a representative of the state, the Attorney General and the justice system, “Alisha Spark” was obligated conduct herself in a manner that did not undermine the system’s dignity or call the competence of the Attorney General’s Office into question. Even if she had been whipping leather-clad, squealing men free of charge, she was still duty-bound to keep her kinky escapades secret and private, because once they became public, if they did, they would harm her ability to do her legal job. Would a jury be as likely to accept an argument from a prosecutor who had pictures circulating the internet showing her whipping up fun in her alternate profession while dressed like Cat Woman? Maybe, but no sane Attorney General would want to take that chance.

Kinky though she may be, Smith is apparently good at her day job. If the Attorney General  believes that his office won’t be tangibly impeded by her continued employment in a legal role that doesn’t require a high profile or courtroom duty, then it would make sense to keep her on. Otherwise, it is the Naked Teacher Principle again, under the rare sub-category labeled “Dominatrix Lawyers.”

Rep. Schakowsky Was Right…Inarticulate, But Right

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

Okay, Jan Schakowsky's not exactly Daniel Webster.But she's not wrong, either.

As proof of the degree that Tea Party anti-tax mania has unhinged the brains of conservatives generally, especially hyper-ventillating  pundits, consider last week’s controversy over poor Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill), who told a morning talk show, Wade & Roma on WLS-AM in Chicago, that citizens were obligated to pay a portion of what they earned to the government, and as a result became the poster girl for What’s Wrong With America, or at least the Democratic Party.

To read and listen to the abuse and ridicule heaped on Schakowsky, one would have thought that she was Lenin-in-a-bra, advocating government confiscation of the wealth stolen from the workers—in fact, that’s what I did thought when I heard some of the furious rants about her comments from the conservative talk show circuit. Then I listened to the clip. Do you know the horrible, foolish thing she said? You’ll be shocked. Here’s the key exchange: Continue reading →

The Washington Post’s Hypocrite Who Doesn’t Understand Hypocrisy

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

Washington Post columnist Erik Wemple says he really, really believes that it is bad journalism to write about the pre-marital sex of public figures, particularly before they were public figures. After all, 1) it’s nobody’s business and 2) it’s an invasion of privacy. But Wemple wrote this week that he makes an exception to that rule when hypocrisy is involved. Thus it is OK for Sarah Palin’s slimy biographical hit-man Joe McGinnis to dish about rumors of her dalliances before she was wed, because, Wemple says, in a 2006 Eagle Forum questionnaire, Palin indicated that she supported funding abstinence-until-marriage education programs and opposed teaching sex-education programs. This makes her a hypocrite, he claims, so journalists quoting McGinnis’s invasion of privacy and violations decency is fine and dandy with him.

Wemple is wrong once, twice, three ways:

1. What Palin says years after her pre-marital sexual exploits, assuming there were any, can’t possibly make her a hypocrite. It is not hypocritical for a mature and experienced adult to decide that her conduct in the past was mistaken, unwise and risky, and to advocate policies that discourage it in others. Condemning someone for learning from mistakes and trying to craft public policy based on acquired wisdom is the mark of a fool. Continue reading →

Solyndra, the White House, and the Most Dangerous Conflict of Interest of All

/ Jack Marshall / 23 Comments

It isn’t a Republican or a Democratic Party problem, and it isn’t unique to the Obama Administration. It is a structural problem in American government, a conflict of interest that pits the best interests of the American people against the political interests of the party in power. The only solution to the problem, since it is here to stay, is leaders who acknowledge the conflict, are dedicated to doing the right thing anyway, and have the courage to demand that their staffs do likewise.

The Soyndra scandal shows that Barack Obama is not such a leader. That does not make him unique, but it is a serious ethical flaw nonetheless. Continue reading →