Month: August 2011

Ethics Hero: Actor Ryan Gosling

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

Ryan Gosling....ready for action!

Caught on video: Hollywood hunk Ryan Gosling (“The Notebook”) saw a fight developing on the streets of NYC, dropped his bag of groceries and used his personal-trainer toned bod to break it up.

Stopping violence in public can be dangerous, and I wouldn’t recommend it for everyone. Gosling obviously knew what he was doing, however, and what he was doing was fulfilling the citizen’s duty to fix a problem when he or she can. Proactive participation in society, including discouraging misconduct whenever possible, is profoundly ethical, and too rare. The actor not only stopped a brawl, he also established himself as a member of that endangered species, the celebrity who deserves to be a role model.

Gosling doesn’t just play heroes in the movies—-he knows how to be the real thing.

Comment of the Day: “Ethics Carnage in Wisconsin…”

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

Pat earns the Comment of the Day by refocusing my attention on an issue I had been planning to examine in detail, only to be distracted by the swirl of current events. The issue is the ethics of public unions, a controversy in sharp focus during Governor Scott Walker’s overhaul of public employee pensions and collective bargaining rights in Wisconsin. Thanks, Pat, for  both your thoughtful comment and for getting me back to this important matter. You’ll  have my response soon.

Here is Pat’s commentary on “Ethics Carnage in Wisconsin: the Ethics Grades So Far”:

“No one need be a member of the union of concerned scientists to figure out the problem of collectivism in government. If Congress (or the Union) together decided to vote themselves $1,000,000 salaries per year (or exorbitant pensions for life), they could do it. That is the problem of collectivism and it is the problem of democracy – that can defeat the purpose of the freedom of elections. Ordinary taxpayers can be defeated by their own democracy in that regard, and it is no better than having a dictator under tyranny.

“The function of having free elections is to avoid that tyranny, i.e., by electing persons to office temporarily, not to be saddled with them for life (which is what congressional pensions produce). By most ethical standards, it would be congressional embezzlement by the nature of the authority to grant itself those pensions. The same would be true if Congress worked in conjunction with government employees to help them get reelected in order to perpetuate elective office for incumbents so that it can be effectively, for life.

“Both methods defeat the purpose of freedom of elections that is built into the congressional constitutional scheme that separates the elective office from the appointed and the government employee. Government pensions meant for government employees alone has been unethically and grossly inflated and granted to Congress and appointees in a blatant self-serving reward that defeats the purpose of having elections. Terms limits is the only method that can control that abuse of power.

“If government unions demands are too high, they may also need term limits to prevent arbitrary tapping into the proceeds of the taxpayer’s treasury, and thereby limiting what can be paid, and what can be taxed for.

“Public finance can defeat the purpose of democracy without such protections, and it is a necessary feature of all democracies to prevent the power of authority to abuse the power of the people, or there will be only wage slavery by government taxation.

“By tradition before government exploitation, government pensions were granted only to government employees – distinct from those elected – because they were employees. Elected persons are only temporary employees, and meant to be only temporary employees, and therefore not entitled to pensions. But that tradition has been grossly abused by self-serving elected employees to become privileged as elected and privileged as employees where it was designed to be one “or” the other, not one “and” the other.”

Gays, Bridal Shops, Judges, and the Anger of Grief

/ Jack Marshall / 35 Comments

Gay rights opponents are locked in the anger stage of the five stages of grief identified by Dr. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross. Frankly, I thought they would be farther along by now.

The American public has made rapid progress in its acceptance of gay neighbors, gay sons and daughters and same-sex marriages, but those who regard homosexuals as practitioners of an aberrant and corrupting lifestyle, while recognizing, I think, that the cultural battle is lost, are deep in grief. Anger is only the second stage of the grieving process, and the most destructive as well as the stage that generates the most unethical and irrational conduct. If we can somehow get the grief-stricken to bargaining, depression and acceptance, the final three stages, everyone,including them, would be better off.

The signs are clear right now, however, that anger is the prevalent mood among anti-gay bitter-enders, after the first two stages, denial and isolation, have played  out. As a consequence we are seeing more and more instances of gratuitous cruelty and aggression against gays. It is usually diagnosed as hate, but its root is the anger of grief. The culture is changing in ways that some never dreamed it could or would, and they are furious. Continue reading →

Comment of the Day: “As the Cancer of Corruption Spreads, a Diagnosis and Treatment”

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

Michael, who knows college culture from personal experience,  elaborates on the University of Miami athletics scandal, which he correctly notes is hardly news, just a predictable escalation of corruption we have tolerated for too long. When the reaction to an instance of corruption is “well, that’s no surprise!” it is a symptom that we are becoming inured to a cultural condition that should not be tolerated.

Here is Michael’s Comment of the Day, on “As the Cancer of Corruption Spreads, a Diagnosis and Treatment”:

“Well, this is not news. This is just someone mentioning the elephant in the room. Some things I have noticed in my years of academia about sports include:

From School 1:

• Riding a bus with the campus football players for 3 years and listening to them talk. Things like “The cops said if they caught me beating someone up outside the bar one more time, they would arrest me”.

• An athlete who “only could afford to go to college because of football because his family has no money” had some problems with the law. Six months into the school year, he was living in one of the most expensive condo complexes in town. His beeper went off to notify him that someone was tampering with his brand-new $35,000 Jeep Grand Cherokee. He went out on the balcony with his brand-new $1000 Glock pistol. When he saw several people around his Jeep, he started shooting at them. They were the police (condo complexes like this have excellent response time). He said he was worried because he had just installed a $6000 stereo system in the Jeep. No charges were filed.

•My brother ended up in a small class (~20 students) with a Heisman trophy winner. He only found out when the “student” athlete showed up once near the end of the semester. That was the “student’s” only appearance that semester.

From School 2:

• A football player from a poor family who needed the scholarship to go to college moved into my apartment complex one building away from me. After about a month, an electronics store van pulled up and delivered a full-wall sized TV. A brand-new Porsche 924 showed up later that day. Boosters are wonderful.

• The geography department issued a memo to the department that all faculty would provide the keys to their exams to the athletic tutors at least one week in advance of the exam. This explained why geography was one of the most popular majors among athletes at that University. Nationally, such majors are known as ‘safe harbor’ majors by the people who study such things.

From School 3:

•Athletes are paid to ‘watch oil wells’ to make sure they are working (they are on timers and automatically monitored.)

•A local car dealership was caught paying football players as shadow employees.

•A former student reports that he is in the same class with a major college football player. He reports that the player listens to his iPod while an Asian girl (his tutor) takes notes. On test days, the tutor takes the exam, in class, in front of all the students and the professor.

“This is going on at all schools. You can’t stop it with sanctions. Everyone knows about it, and everyone accepts it. The only way to stop it is to restructure it. The judge who accepted the ‘student-athlete’ excuse did everyone a great disservice. If they had ruled for the students as employees, we could go about this without such scandals. Athletes would be employees, could be paid, have insurance, disability, and could get a tuition waiver to take classes. They could take classes part-time and if they didn’t make it to the major leagues, they could stay on and complete their degrees in a couple years. No more dishonesty. The downside is, someone might actually start to look at how much taxpayer money goes to support these programs and start asking why we spend so much ‘education’ money on these teams. Don’t say ‘they make money!’, only about a dozen make more money than they cost and that isn’t every year. In the early 2000′s a team that recently was #1 ran out of money and the college cancelled the journal subscriptions at the library to keep it going.”

Addendum from JAM: I feel compelled to note that the idea of paying athletes as employees, which I hear a lot, is a terrible idea. With the tuition at colleges and universities already making paupers out of students, a university’s resources should never be used to pay entertainers, which is what paid athletes are. Require schools to make sure that every athlete is legitimately passing genuine academic courses, or is caused to withdraw from school. Ban athletic scholarships for students who do not have the academic credentials to be admitted without them. Ban schools that cheat from high profile sports for five years or more. Dissolve the NCAA. Schools are for education, not sports. Sports should have no more prominence than the theater program or the chess team.

It is rare that the application of rational priorities will solve a huge problem of long standing, but this is such an instance.

Ethical Quote of the Week: Ed Koch

/ Jack Marshall / Leave a comment

You're still doin' just fine, Ed!

“David Weprin is making phone calls trying to scare seniors. They’re nonsense. Weprin should be ashamed of himself . . . Bob Turner is running for Congress to protect your Medicare and Social Security. If anyone tries to scare you with lies about Bob Turner, tell ’em Ed Koch told them to knock it off!”

——Former New York Mayor Ed Koch, in a robocall on behalf of Republican Bob Turner, who is alarming Democrats by threatening to win Anthony Weiner’s vacant House seat in New York’s 9th Congressional District.  The State Democratic Committee, trying to bolster his opponent, Democrat David Weprin, had sent their own robocalls to senior voters, warning that Turner wanted to “dismantle” Social Security  (Translation: “You won’t get your checks!” This is a lie, as no politician has proposed any Social Security reform that would alter the benefits of any current or soon-to-be recipients of Social Security benefits.)  and end the program “as we know it.” Continue reading →

As the Cancer of Corruption Spreads, a Diagnosis and Treatment

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

A sign in Africa, which corruption continues to ravage. We ignore its warning at our peril.

Last week, three more disheartening cheating scandals were in the spotlight, in completely separate areas of our society: legal education, the military, and college sports. The signs that the cancer of corruption is spreading through America’s culture with increasing speed are frightening, but being frightened isn’t constructive. Working to eradicate the cancer is. Last week’s revelations:

  • The American Bar Association publicly admonished Villanova Law School for a pattern of misrepresenting—inflating—GPAs and LSATs of its applicants and admitted students in order to receive a higher ranking, which in turn would attract more and better applicants. The scandal broke in June, and the ABA was lenient, stating that the school had reported its own misconduct (the responsible parties had been discovered and dismissed). Is Villanova alone, or is it just the first law school in this increasingly competitive environment to get caught? If a law school cheats, what kind of lawyers will it produce? Continue reading →

The West Memphis Three, Still Abused By Unethical Prosecution

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

Their real killer is still loose, but law enforcement doesn't care: it has the West Memphis Three to blame.

The release this week of the men railroaded into prison as teenagers for the 1993 killing of three young Cub Scouts in West Memphis Arkansas was covered by the news media in superficial and misleading fashion, concentrating on the human interest aspects of the event—a “happy ending” in which three wrongfully accused and convicted men finally get justice. This overshadowed the disgraceful performance of the justice system in general and the Arkansas justice system in particular. The circumstances of the men’s release were only slightly less revolting than their conviction, and the method by which it was achieved was thoroughly unethical.

Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin, and Jessie Misskelley Jr. had been in jail for 18 years, with Baldwin and Misskelley serving life sentences and Damien Echols languishing on death row. They are almost certainly innocent. Continue reading →

Ethics Dunce: Somers Point, N.J. Bridal Shop, Here Comes the Bride

/ Jack Marshall / 66 Comments

Instrumentalities of crime, according to today's Ethics Dunce

In Somers Point, New Jersey, the proprietors of the bridal shop Here Comes the Bride refused to sell a bridal gown to a lesbian woman, saying that it refused to aid and abet “illegal actions.”

Never mind that gay marriages are not “illegal,” but simply are not recognized by the law in many places, which is something completely different. Never mind that Alix Gintner’s marriage is going to be legal, since the ceremony will be in New York.

That is all beside the point. An officious, mean-spirited and brain-wiltingly ignorant woman intentionally ruined what should have been a joyous day for a young woman and her family out of pure bigotry and hate. Continue reading →

Ethics Hero: Jennifer McKendrick

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

My hero.

Jennifer McKendrick is my favorite Ethics Hero of 2011.

An Indiana County freelance photographer of sensitivity, courage and principle, McKendrick engaged in classic ethical behavior—seeing wrongful conduct that harms others, and taking affirmative action to address it. Her conduct is a template for all of us, and not merely regarding the specific problem she decided to confront: online bullying.

McKendrick had been hired to shoot the senior photos of several high school girls, then discovered that they had viciously denigrated other students on Facebook. She sent the girls’ parents this letter:
 Continue reading →

President Obama’s Unethical Illegal Immigration Ploy

/ Jack Marshall / 29 Comments

The President has been doing his summer reading

The ultimate descent of character for any elected leader is when he or she places the retention of political power above core governing principles and the best interests of the governed. I did not expect Barack Obama to sink to that state, but with the announcement yesterday of his cynical and unethical refusal to enforce the immigration laws, he has.

His administration declared yesterday that it will grant an indefinite reprieve to thousands of illegal immigrants facing deportation, and permit them to stay and work legally. This, of course, does more than effect those apprehended illegals: it signals millions more that they are in no danger of having to be accountable for ignoring U.S. immigration procedures, and signals future illegals that the borders of the United States are essentially open. Continue reading →