January is always slow around these parts thanks to holiday hangovers, but January 2024 was especially quiet. I have no idea why; it was certainly full of ethics news, and I know (by looking at my backed-up inventory) that I didn’t cover everything I should have.
This is the last chance to salvage the month’s honor and send us into February with some momentum.
So belly up to the bar….
Ethics Alarms 
A fascinating story from the world of hockey this week, with legal and ethical components.
Hockey Canada is the organization that oversees youth hockey development in that country, ranging from little kids all the way up to players ready for draft into the National Hockey League. To say that it’s a powerful organization in a hockey-mad nation is an understatement.
In 2018, Team Canada – a national team of the very best young players in the nation (17-19 years old, typically, though there are exceptions made for younger players of extraordinary talent) won at the World Juniors. In June of that year, much of the team was at a “Gala and Golf” event in London, Ontario. Apparently, one player met a gal at a bar, brought her back to his hotel room (loaded), had his way (it’s unknown whether this was actually consensual at this point). But then other players came into the room. Some apparently had golf clubs and other items which scared the crap out of the girl. Other players got in on the action, though to what extent is still somewhat unclear.
Clear sexual assault, with multiple actors. At first, Hockey Canada covered the whole mess up. In 2022, The girl sued Hockey Canada and the Canadian Hockey Leage (last stop before turning pro; many CHL players have already been drafted into the NHL). forked over millions, and here’s where things get especially slimy: they paid out through side accounts, with the money coming from revenues. Those revenues are largely made up of fees Hockey Canada collects from players’ families in order to participate in development programs (raising a hockey player ain’t cheap).
Once the story broke, top sponsors withdrew support, and Hockey Canada lost federal funding. The entire board, along with Hockey Canada’s CEO, resigned. Hockey Canada and the NHL made noise about conducting independent investigations, though nothing has yet been released.
Last week, the London (Ontario) Police announced that five members of that team were to surrender themselves to face criminal charges. No names were announced, though exactly five players (four from the NHL and one who plays in Switzerland) were granted “leaves of absence for an unspecified time.” All were members of the 2018 team. So pretty much everyone who can count on one hand knows who the suspects are. But meantime, the NHL is staying completely mum, leaving it to outlets like the CBC, the Globe and Mail and TSN (Canada’s equivalent to ESPN) to do the digging. The London PD has scheduled a press conference for February 5 – a long time out to schedule a press conference, but in hockey-mad Canada it’s presumed that nobody, not even the cops, want to draw attention away from the annual All Star game, which is next week.
To say that this reeks to high heaven is an understatement. Four different NHL teams had players who were implicated, and given Hockey Canada’s importance as a player pipeline to the NHL it’s impossible to believe that the league commissioner (Gary Bettman) and the league Governors (made up of a panel of team owners) were unaware of this, or that some teams had active players who were involved in the assault.
Hockey has come a long way in the past few decades – as a sport, and as one that’s become far more inclusive. It’s truly international (at least in the northern hemisphere). There are junior development teams, active adult recreational leagues – there are hundreds of thousands of people out there who just plain love the game, with the NHL being the worldwide pinnacle.
The game certainly doesn’t need crap like this. How far this goes will be fascinating to watch. Given that the Board of Governors is made up of team owners, I doubt much will happen there. But it wouldn’t surprise me to see some heads roll at the executive level of the league. The only question is whose.
This situation strongly reminds me of what happened with the Catholic Church and their child abuse scandal a while back.
One would think, in this day and age, that people would understand that coverups such as this simply do not work, not in the long term.
But it is especially egregious to use other people’s money to essentially pay out hush money.
One might think they could be criminally liable for larceny or something along those lines. I don’t know the law but I do wonder.
Shame on them. And it’s doubly a shame because hockey is such an exciting sport to watch.
Here is an article worth discussing.
https://groups.google.com/g/talk.politics.guns/c/xkUZsPABYUs/m/OQHEo7UaAAAJ
Erm… it was discussed, or a variation on the theme was. This week. Here.
Some of the “findings” are so ridiculous no sentient person would believe them. At best, this is woefully sloppy methodology. More likely, it’s a scam, spewing out what the folks paying for the poll want to hear, possibly without polling literally anyone.
(More evidence of hooey: the surveys’ results vanished even from the conservative blogosphere’s radar in about a a day)
Essentially, all of the arguments that Trump incited tHe Insurrection®™ boil down to this.
Trump promoted Badthink®™, and because some people rioted on the basis of Badthink®™, that was an insurrection and Trump incited it.
Some may argue this applies to Patrice Cullors, Nikole Hannah-Jones, Charles M. Blow, and many others. After all, they chanted, “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot”. They claimed that the police habitually hunt down and gun down unarmed Black men. They claimed the criminal justice system is systemically racist. And some people rioted on this basis.
It would apply if this principle was enforced in an even-handed manner. But the same side that says that Trump was promoting Badthink®™ also believe that Cullors, Jones, and Blow were promoting Goodthink®™, and those who rioted based on this Goodthink®™ were not engaging in Insurrection®™, but fighting White Supremacy®™
And that’s the biggest problem right there. There is no single standard for Republicans and Democrats. When Republicans do it, it’s evil and has ulterior motives; when Democrats do it, it’s for the Greater Good or is really no big deal.
I think this is part of what Americans are pushing back on. It’s not that they prefer one side over the other, but they do recognize when one side is being treated consistently unfairly and, if there’s one thing Americans like to do, it’s stand up for the underdog.
Not entirely complete… The employer has to sell the fruit of the hour of labor plus 15% employment tax, 8% sales tax, 15% overhead, and hopefully still have a bit for himself.
I concur with Russ. This lecturer is correct that employees are paid less than the marginal value they generate for the employer, but foolishly wrong about what normative conclusion to draw from it.
Employer do more than maintain/control the means of production. Employers create the brand recognition. They market and sell the reputation of the product. They own the relationship between the customers and the product. Therein lies the true problem with employers.
Employers leverage their ownership over the customer base’s will to buy, and the symbols they recognize, to make deals that put the employees at a disadvantage. Eventually the disadvantage snowballs into exploitation of the workers, keeping them in a position where they must accept any offer or starve.
Not only that, but they make decisions that make their product worse and less efficient. In my experience supporting software and from what I’ve read about many large companies, the owners of the brand usually end up making decisions that make the product less reliable for the customers, against the objections of the people actually designing and supporting the product. That’s why I don’t trust corporations. The people with the power don’t know how to make things work and aren’t interested in learning. They know how to convince people to buy things and how to persuade them the purchase wasn’t a mistake.
The reason that people are worried about having a smaller portion of a bigger economic pie is that it’s not only a person’s absolute prosperity that matters. Relative prosperity matters because economic power translates to an advantage in disputes. The people with the bigger portions of the pie can use those resources to reduce other people’s options and cause their portions to shrink further and further, sometimes even smaller than they’d be if everyone got an equal portion of a small pie.
If the rich actually cared primarily about making the overall pie bigger they wouldn’t engage in anti-competitive and exploitative business practices. The rich care about having bigger slices in absolute terms, but also care about maximizing their relative share of the pie and thereby their power, which is why they engage in business practices that reduce overall prosperity but keep people in line. (E.g. planned obsolescence, faulty software design, tricky fees and contracts, dishonest sales and customer service practices…)
I’m pro-free market, and I think our approach to capitalism leads away from the free market and into regulatory capture, oligopolies, and worker exploitation.
>>Eventually the disadvantage snowballs into exploitation of the workers, keeping them in a position where they must accept any offer or starve.>>
I would say that, yes, that can happen, but that it is not an inevitable result of capitalism, especially in the United States.
There may have been a time when that dynamic was active, but one of the huge appeals of this country was and is that you always had the option to pick up stakes and move somewhere else, over the next hill.
That’s how this country was settled and how it expanded. Many folks left situations where they were being exploited or persecuted and found new opportunities elsewhere.
I believe that this is still true. Granted that, in the digital age, it’s harder to disappear entirely but you can still leave and go somewhere else.
One of the early attractions for Google was their slogan “Don’t be evil”. They’ve abandoned that, but it’s easy to see how that outlook attracted people. In general, I think that companies who do or are ‘evil’ have a harder time attracting customers and employees as word gets around.
Not all companies are the Phone Company of Lily Tomlin fame. Almost always these days there is an alternative.
The SCOTUS decided that the Biden Administration could remove the barriers Texas is using to halt the flow of illegal immigrants into the United States.
Governor Abbott is channeling Andy Jackson in challenging SCOTUS to enforce this and multiple sympathetic governors are backing him and, per Abbott, are sending their own states’ National Guard to assist.
In response, Democratic pundits are urging the Biden Administration to federalize the National Guard the way Ike did in order to enforce school desegregation.
– What are the ethics of refusing to abide by a SCOTUS decision, even an unhappy one like this?
– What are the ethics of supporting a governor that refuses to abide by such a decision?
– What are the ethics of using your state’s National Guard to defy a SCOTUS decision or sending your state’s National Guard to help another state defy a SCOTUS decision.
– What are the ethics of federalizing the National Guards to enforce compliance?
– What a hot mess this is!
I admit to having an ick factor reaction to this. I didn’t care for Roe v Wade but I would not have endorsed using my state’s National Guard to block access to Planned Parenthood.
What do you all think?
The SCOTUS has not actually told Texas to do anything. they vacated an injunction against the federals government. There is presently no injunction against Texas state officials.
Biden’s hot mess of (not) handling the border is pushing us closer and closer to a place nobody really wants to be. Is the Texas border the next fort Sumpter?
Well, Texas and the U.S. government are in a law suit — I don’t recall who is suing who — about these barriers Texas has put in the Rio Grande. The lower (district?) court issued an injunction preventing the U.S. government from tearing them down. The Supreme Court — without ruling on the merits of the case, which hasn’t been decided yet — gave a ruling that lifted this injunction. As far as I know there has been no action on the part of the U.S. government yet. Texas has basically warned them “Don’t” to quote a recent U.S. president.
So I don’t think anything’s actually hit the fan yet, but threats and strongly worded notes of protest abound.
I do think your reference to Roe v Wade is extremely apt.
We just cannot have a state take action against the duly constituted authorities of the United States, no matter how wrong headed or stupid their bosses are. That way lies madness — or something really bad.
I sincerely hope that all parties involved will wait for the outcome of the lawsuit (and its inevitable appeals). Conservatives made many speeches about Roe v Wade, they made many proposals, but ultimately they deferred to the rule of law.
Dr. Andrew B. Chung came up with a cure for gencder dysphoria.
https://alt.christnet.christianlife.narkive.com/SatJUbkZ/katrina-greeting-michaele-on-01-26-24#post3
Vandals saw off Jackie Robinson statue, steal it from Kansas park.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2024/01/27/jackie-robinson-statue-witchita-kansas/
That surprised me. I didn’t know Jackie owned slaves.