Month: March 2014

Ethics Observations On The President’s “Funny or Die” Appearance.

/ Jack Marshall / 110 Comments

You should watch the entire “Funny or Die” bit here.

1. As has been obvious from the beginning of his administration, President Obama has retained the most incompetent, tone-deaf, leadership-ignorant and inept advisors in recent history, and those advising his predecessors were nothing to be proud of. This means that President Obama has tolerated, and worse, followed the advice of such incompetent advisors. He also selected them. He is accountable.

2. For the President of the United States, in the middle of an international crisis in which his authority, power and stature is central, to submit himself as a prop in a comedy video is irresponsible, reckless, and shows abysmal priorities and judgment. Continue reading →

Now THIS Is An Unethical Public Employee

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments
That's Campatelli on the right,

That’s Campatelli on the right,

This is the beginning of the Boston Globe’s front page story about an investigator’s report on the conduct of Patricia Campatelli, the Suffolk County (in Boston, Mass.) Register of Probate, an elected position:

“Patricia Campatelli often worked only 15 hours a week at her $122,500-a-year job as Suffolk County register of probate, and she spent much of that time taking “numerous smoking breaks, scratching lottery tickets, looking at East Boston real estate on the Internet, and filling out puzzles,” according to employees quoted in a confidential report obtained by the Globe.

Even before the embattled Campatelli was accused of punching an employee in the face…”

The rest of the story didn’t make coffee come out my nose like the last part, but it was pretty jaw-dropping nonetheless. Campatelli, who is clearly a piece of work, is currently on administrative leave and denies everything in the report, despite the statements of virtually everyone who works with her that were provided to the court-appointed investigator Ronald P. Corbett, Jr. Corbett’s report has been forwarded to a committee of the Supreme Judicial Court for possible disciplinary action. Continue reading →

Ethics Quote of the Week: The Detroit News

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

“While it may be politically expedient, rewriting a law passed by Congress simply to avoid ballot box consequences is an outrageous abuse of executive power…No law should be reshaped for the sole purpose of benefiting a single political party.”

—-The Detroit News, condemning the cynical and nakedly political decision by the Obama administration to postpone the consequences of the Affordable Care Act until after the 2014 mid-terms, to protect vulnerable Democrats from voter anger.
train-wreckSo many of Ethics Alarms’ reflexive Obama administration apologists have fled lately that I wonder if anyone will have the fortitude to take to the parapets and defend the latest turn of the Obamacare Ethics Train Wreck. Highlights from the clear-eyed Detroit News editorial: Continue reading →

Case Study: Rationalization #2

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments
Also, the team's mascot is this thing...

Also, the team’s mascot is this thing…

Note to all you baseball haters and National Pastime illiterates: This case study arises out of baseball, but it’s not a baseball ethics post. I’m in Boston, it’s Spring Training—give me a break.

A clear-cut rules violation by the Boston Red Sox has been nearly universally dismissed by fans and media alike by one of the most egregious uses of #2 on the Ethics Alarms Rationalization list. In case you don’t have your rationalizations memorized yet—and you should, because when you hear them in your head, you are about to do something unethical—this is the one, and it’s second on the list only to “Everybody does it” for good reason. It’s one of the most popular and destructive rationalizations of all:

2. The “They’re Just as Bad” Excuse,

or “They had it coming”

The mongrel offspring of The Golden Rationalization and the Bible-based dodges a bit farther down the list, the “They’re Just as Bad” Excuse is both a rationalization and a distraction. As a rationalization, it posits the absurd argument that because there is other wrongdoing by others that is similar, as bad or worse than the unethical conduct under examination, the wrongdoer’s conduct shouldn’t be criticized or noticed. As a distraction, the excuse is a pathetic attempt to focus a critic’s attention elsewhere, by shouting, “Never mind me! Why aren’t you going after those guys?”

Its other familiar, equally absurd but even more corrupting manifestation is the “They had it coming” variation. This argues that wrongdoing toward a party isn’t wrong because the aggrieved party doesn’t deserve ethical treatment because of its own misconduct. But the misconduct of a victim never justifies unethical conduct directed against that victim. Continue reading →

Those Unethical, Exorbitant, Non-Profit Speaking Fees…But Don’t Blame Bill Clinton!

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments
No wonder Bill looks so happy...

No wonder Bill looks so happy…

In the middle of instituting two rounds of major layoffs in 2012,  the non profit Washington Hospital Center gave Bill Clinton a whopping $225,000 speaking fee  to appear at its annual Cardiovascular Research Technologies conference, where Clinton expounded on health care reform and his own battle against heart disease. The hospital didn’t disclose the $225,000 payment on its annual Internal Revenue Service forms, but it surfaced on the list of income sources the ex-President provided on his wife’s required ethics filing as Secretary of State. This waste of precious funds is unconscionable, and it is also all too common.

The story was originally broken by the Washington Times, with its angle being that Clinton was the villain. I will always enjoy a little Clinton-bashing, but that is unfair and ridiculous. No one forced the hospital to pay such an exorbitant fee. No one forces any organization to pay such speaking fees; if organizations wouldn’t pay them, Clinton and other blue chip speakers would charge what the market would bear. Both Clintons charge in this range to speak, and remember, the time they devote to spreading their pearls of wisdom is typically an hour or less. Non profits as well as deep pocket corporations like Goldman Sachs, American Express and Fidelity Investments also pay the fees or similar ones, and it is an abuse of discretion whether the payer is a non profit or not. * Continue reading →

Reagan Building Security Follies: We Are Incompetent Too.

/ Jack Marshall / 19 Comments

Ronald_Reagan_Building_-_Washington,_DC

Once a month I give an ethics seminar at the Reagan building in Washington D.C. This is a massive, confusing, and absurdly expensive government edifice that serves as a center for events, conferences and exhibits, also houses some agencies. Any terrorist who got inside with out a map and a Segue would rsik wandering around lost for a week, but there are also usually elected officials, judges or VIPs in the vast expanse,  along with a Boy Scout troop or two.

Usually I am dropped off, and go in through a main entrance off of 14th Street. So I have to go through a metal detector, have my brief case x-rayed, and, for extra measure, get wanded, because my metal hip joint sets off the alarm. (50% of the time, I may add, the process is executed by surly, rude security officers.)

Yesterday, though, I drove myself into the city. The security officers stopped my car at the garage entrance, asked for ID, and checked my car’s trunk (not the back seat), and allowed me to park. Then I took the elevator to the floor where my lecture venue was, and proceeded to the seminar, where I easily slaughtered all 320 people in the room by detonating the bomb under my suit. OK, that’s not true. But it could have been.Nobody checked my brief case: the bomb could have been there too. There is no screening if you drive into the garage, beyond the trunk search. This has been the system for years, and both Bush administration and Obama administration officials must have been made aware of it years ago. Either the ritual at the front entrance is for show, wasting our time and submitting us to indignities for reasons of public perception only, or the lax security at the parking garage is a blatant and dangerous security flaw that should have been fixed. Continue reading →

Incompetent Elected Officials Of The Month: Chicago City Council

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments
Rugby, my pure Jack Russell Terrier (though "pure" is an oxymoron with Jacks)

Rugby, my pure Jack Russell Terrier (though “pure” is an oxymoron with Jacks)

Laws affect our lives too much to be concocted by dolts. If elected officials are going to restrict our freedom, they have an obligation to do so only with good cause, careful consideration, precision, and after making certain that unintended consequences will be minimal.

On the other hand, elected official could just say “What the hell, let’s see how this turns out,” and be like the Chicago City Council, which passed an ordinance banning the sale of pure breed dogs.

This is as nice an example of good intentions gone stupid as we are ever likely to see. The intent is to cut off the supply of dogs from s0-called puppy mills, which are rightly regarded as too often cruel and irresponsible. However, in pursuit of that elusive goal, the city council didn’t bother to craft a law that addressed the problem effectively, or that even made sense.

Continue reading →

Ethics Quote of the Day: Ken White at Popehat

/ Jack Marshall / 36 Comments

File photo of U.S. Director of Exempt Organizations for the IRS Lerner being sworn in to testify before a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing in Washington

“Pardon me: if you accept the proposition that the government targets organizations for IRS scrutiny because of their political views, and you still say things like ‘why take the Fifth if you have nothing to hide’, then you’re either an idiot or a dishonest partisan hack.”

—-Attorney-blogger Ken White, discussing former IRS official Lois Lerner’s refusal to testify in front of Rep. Daryl Issa’s House Government Oversight Committee

Good point.

Elaborating on the point before this statement, Ken points out why this is so:

“You take the Fifth because the government can’t be trusted. You take the Fifth because what the truth is, and what the government thinks the truth is, are two very different things. You take the Fifth because even if you didn’t do anything wrong your statements can be used as building blocks in dishonest, or malicious, or politically motivated prosecutions against you. You take the Fifth because if you answer questions truthfully the government may still decide you are lying and prosecute you for lying.”

Got it. Or, you take the Fifth because you really did engage in illegal activity in a coordinated effort to obstruct legal political action for partisan motives, on orders from someone with close ties to the White House, which still may be the case.

In the same post, Ken explains that Lerner may have waived her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination, or may not. If she has, then she is in contempt of Congress. If she hasn’t, she isn’t.

My observations on this slow-motion ethics train wreck: Continue reading →

When “Oopsie!” Isn’t Acceptible: It’s “Spring Forward,” You Idiots!

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

daylight_savings

From Ron Sarro, a friend, former D.C. journalist, once president of the Washington Press Club, and a reliable source:

“The ABC National weather woman just advised viewers “Don’t forget to turn your clocks back” on Sunday, then demonstrated how to use a machine to mix a booze drink. Its ‘Spring forward, Fall back,”  ABC, which made no effort to correct the error.”

Oh, nice. Now people who rely on ABC will be two hours off on Sunday. Imagine what kind of carnage this reporter’s gaffe will cause, and there is absolutely no way ABC can fix the problem. Sure, the correct information is out there in many places, but thousands, perhaps thousands of viewers will suffer because an inept and unprofessional reporter wasn’t thinking or taking appropriate care.

Sure, mistakes will happen…and this one should have been flagged immediately in the studio, and fixed on the spot. Moreover, there are certain kinds of information that cannot be excusably miscommunicated—the addresses of 911 call emergencies, for example.  Explaining to a patient over the phone how much medicine to take. Even conveying recipes in cooking shows. Such information flags itself; anyone should know that when one is telling millions of people to do something that might completely disrupt their lives if done incorrectly, you must be accurate, and you must be certain that you have the correct information and are accurately transmitting it.

We should be able to rely on professionals to understand this. There is very little professional and therefore very little trustworthy either about the broadcast networks any more, however….so we can’t.

A lot of people are going to learn this the hard way on Sunday.

_______________________

Graphics: ABC News

Lawyer Daniel Muessig’s Clever, Effective, Legally Ethical And Thoroughly Despicable Ad

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

Just as I’ve been desperately trying to explain that lawyers do not represent bad people because they like them or want to loose them upon the world,  here comes innovative Pittsburgh lawyer Daniel Muessig, whose clever TV ad proclaims that this is exactly what he wants to do. Here it is:

Is this an ethical ad? According to the Pennsylvania Rules of Professional Conduct, it is within the conduct permitted by the state’s legal ethics rules. The ad isn’t misleading. It doesn’t make promises the lawyer cannot keep. It doesn’t represent dramatic recreations as fact, or use broad metaphors and exaggerations. (Lawyer ads are held to a standard of literalness that presumes the public has never see any other kinds of advertising in their entire lives.) Once upon a time the various state bar advertising regulations included prohibitions on “undignified” communications, or those that undermined public trust in the profession, but those days are long past: the standards were necessarily vague, and breached free speech principles.

So we have this: a lawyer who appeals to his future criminal clients by saying that he thinks like a criminal, believes laws are arbitrary, that other lawyers will “blow them off” and that he visits jails frequently because that’s where his friends are. He attacks his own colleagues and profession, denigrates the rule of law he is sworn to uphold, and seeks the trust of criminals not because of his duty as a professional, but because he’s just like them. Muessig is willing to undermine the law-abiding public’s belief in the justice system and the reputation of his profession and his colleagues in order to acquire clients. I’m sure his strategy will work, too. Continue reading →