The second Comment of the Day, from prolific commenter Michael R, explores how the Volkswagen plot may have been nourished by industry-crushing over-regulation.
This scandal is worse that you present it. When you look at it, our government encourages such conduct. When you look at what happened, it sure looks like our wonderful Democrats hate the United States and the companies and working Americans. In 1998, the government went after US diesel manufacturers for a less-devious defeat device (it seems that it worked only when the engine was under strain and the emission controls worked at least some of the time during normal operation). They were fined and had to pay for environmental remediation to the tune of $1 billion. The software was not as essential to the running of the engines as VW’s, as the companies were able to make the engines compliant with a software fix.
Weekend comments at Ethics Alarms are typically down about 20% on weekends, but they often make up in quality what they lack in quantity. There were several comments that materially enhanced the posts that inspired them, and I’m going to begin the week’s ethics safari by featuring a few as Comments of the Day.
The first is from Charlie Green on the VW scandal. This is his wheelhouse, and I was hoping he’d weigh in.
A similar point was made about the evident contradictions in ENRON’s mission statements. Just as this is an ethics issue, so is it a trust issue, and one I’ve been writing about as well.
The only thing I’d add is to caution against the simplification that these are conscious evil-doers. The truth is always messier.
I’m sure very few employees at VW felt a fully conscious awareness of wrong doing on their parts. That doesn’t mitigate the importance of full on prosecution of leaders, but it does mean we need to recognize the nature of human frailty and group-think, as well as the huge impacts of environment.
Demonization doesn’t work here past a few top people —like [resigned CEO]Winterkorn, who has no excuse for not having known. But this is also a particularly strong case for the proposition that environments pollute moral behavior – it’s not just bad apples.
To paint this as just a few evil blackhats gone wild is to miss the true nature of evil – it’s endemic in the culture, and that’s much scarier.
I’m back, just to note that Charles’ message is the one that had become the career cause of social scientist Phillip Zimbardo, whose work I have referenced several times.
In case you were too distracted by the Pope, you probably noticed that Volkswagen has been caught red-handed in a massive scandal involving cheating on the emissions testing of 11 million diesel-powered cars sold in recent years. The costs to the company may be as much as eighteen billion dollars in the US alone. This is by far the biggest of the many automotive scandals—the fiery Pinto, GM’s deadly ignition switches, Toyota’s self-accelerating cars or Ford-Firestone’s exploding tires—in scope, if not in public policy impact.
Diesel is more popular in Europe than in America, in large part because of environmental testing standards. Gasoline engines emit more carbon dioxide, diesel engines, which are more efficient fuel-wise, emit far more nitrogen oxides (NOx) than gasoline engines. Since the introduction of the US Clean Air Act of 1970, NOx emissions are subjected to more stringent controls than CO₂ emissions here, while across the pond, CO₂ is more tightly controlled than NOx. Thus diesel automobiles make up one third of the passenger vehicle fleet in Europe, but are a relative rarity in the U.S. The sales of diesel cars has been on the rise in recent years, however. Now we know why.
Volkswagen, which manufactures many of the beasts, devised and installed a code functioning as a “defeat device” to sense when one of its diesel vehicles was being tested for nitrogen oxide emissions. test. Once a test was detected, the software would reduce torque and NOx emissions, while under normal conditions, that is, when the vehicle was not being tested for emissions, the car would be guided by a separate program that would increase acceleration, torque, and fuel economy.
“I don’t know…I think we are in a weird place in the world when the following things are considered political. Five things, I’m going to tick them off. These are the five things that were on his and our president’s agenda. Caring for the marginalized and the poor — that’s now political. Advancing economic opportunity for all. Political? Serving as good stewards of the environment. Protecting religious minorities and promoting religious freedom globally. Welcoming [and] integrating immigrants and refugees globally. And that’s political?”
—-Fox News anchor Shep Smith last week, responding to critics of the Pope’s visit to the U.S. and his message, as it was being celebrated by Democrats, Catholics, intellectually dishonest progressives, and, apparently, naive news anchors.
The short answer to Smith’s question is, “Of course it’s political. All of those issues are political.” I would also add, “How can you report political news and not understand that they are political?”
Now I’m going to tick them off:
….”Caring for the marginalized and the poor” requires time, money and personnel, as well as planning and efficiency. All of those in turn require re-allocating resources away from other needs and activities, including important ones that allow people to avoid poverty and marginalization. A society that makes cariung for the non-productive members of society its first priority becomes non-productive itself. So where does “caring for the marginalized and the poor” fit on the priority list? What is the definition of “the marginalized and the poor”? The Pope doesn’t have to define them, but to seriously create policy that accomplishes the goal of “caring for” them—which also requires a definition—is a political task. Continue reading →
[ NOTE:This is a correction. The original version of the post gave the wrong impression that hospitalizations were up: this was not my intent. Thanks to Humble Talent for being persistent. Ethics Alarms apologizes for the error. We’ll try to do better.]
Now 11% of Colorado’s 12 to 17 year-olds use pot, 56% higher than the national average.There has also been a 40% increase in drug-related suspensions and expulsions in school, primarily from marijuana.
Mercy, what a surprise! Who could have predicted that? Well me, for one, as well as others neither dedicated to getting their periodic recreational buzz nor addled by moldy Sixties cant.
Of course making pot legal and widely available for adults would cause an epidemic of use by kids, who, the evidence increasingly shows, may suffer long term adverse effects. Of course it is causing accidents. Of course adding a third harmful legal drug to the devastating and deadly duo of alcohol and tobacco is going to make society dumber, less safe and less productive. Continue reading →
“Look Honey! I found some videos of Carol’s nice band teacher on the intern—OH MY GOD!!!!!
As you may know, Ethics Alarms does its best to catalogue examples of the Naked Teacher Principle and all its related variations. The NTP holds that teachers who allow naked photos of themselves to become available to their sub-college level students over the internet may not credibly claim to be mistreated when their schools no longer wish to employ them. The elusive element is where the line should be drawn. Naked pictures from 25 years earlier? Non-naked pictures that are still sexually provocative? Is the line drawn before or after my personal favorite, the male teacher who is photographed painting canvases using his naked derriere and gonads as brushes, but with a bag over his head?
Wherever the line belongs, I expect no argument over Ethics Alarms’ conclusion that Kristin Sundman, formerly an assistant band teacher at Roosevelt High School in Kent, Ohio but also known as porn performer MelodyXXXTune, misses the cut. Under her web porn name, Kristin could be found on videos engaging in all sorts of activities that students should not be associating with their teachers and authority figures, like frolicking naked in a shower, masturbating and performing oral sex. If a teacher wants to moonlight in a field like this, she has an obligation to alert her school administrators so the school does not become embarrassed, get sued, or become the object of an investigation. Of course, informing the school will usually mean that the teacher won’t be teaching, but that’s a choice the school has the right to make.
There are reasonable exceptions to the Naked Teacher Principle, but if there are any to its sister Online Porn Star Teacher Principle, I don’t have the imagination to envision what it would be.
Researchers with the Department of Veterans Affairs and Boston University have now identified the degenerative disease known as chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, in 96 percent of NFL players that they’ve examined and in 79 percent of all football players. The disease is widely believed to stem from repetitive trauma to the head, and can lead to conditions such as memory loss, depression and dementia.
In total, the lab has found CTE in the brain tissue in 131 out of 165 individuals who, before their deaths, played football either professionally, semi-professionally, in college or in high school.
Any other non-essential industry that carried this much risk of crippling injury and death for its employees would be immediately the object of public protests, activist action, new government regulation and major fines and sanctions. Because of all the money involved and because of an ongoing effort by the NFL to deflect attention from its unconscionable business (there was more uproar over Tom Brady’s suspension than there has been over the concussion scandal), players are still getting brain-injured every Sunday, Monday and Thursday while the crowds cheer, the beer flows and the networks cash in. Parents still steer their kids into playing tackle football, and the carnage continues.
Yes, pro football is an exciting game. Too bad that keeping it exciting kills people, but it does. The game isn’t worth it.
No game is.
I wonder how long it will take for that to sink in?
Twenty-one female servers at Atlantic City’s Borgata Casino sued their employer, claiming that they were objectified, discriminated against and demeaned by being forced to maintain slim and fit figures as “Borgata Babes.” I wrote about this case in 2013, saying,
“While it is true that physical attractiveness can be an employment asset in virtually any job—note #2 on fired TV reporter Shea Allen’s “confessions”— there are some jobs for which it is the primary, or at least a substantial and thus legitimate requirement. Strippers, of course. Fashion models. Cheerleaders. Actresses. Personal trainers. Fox newsreaders. Hooters girls, and pretty obviously, Borgata Babes. To say that a business can’t make a decision to have fantasy sex objects as part of its appeal is an excessive use of political correctness grafted to state power. Essentially, the suing Babes are arguing that they can pull a bait and switch—use their well-toned beauty to get hired, agree to maintain the high standard of visual perfection that they presented to their employer, then go to pot and sue if their employer objects. Beauty is an asset in the workplace and a tangible one: the pressure on the culture to behave as if that asset doesn’t exist (the pejorative labeling of a preference for the lovely over the hideous as “lookism” is the weapon of choice) and to prohibit employers from ever hiring on that basis in jobs where it is a substantial and relevant qualification is as unfair to the fit and comely as requiring an investment banker to look like Kate Upton….”
Comedian Steve Rannazzisi is in the midst of his 7th seasons starring on the popular TV show,“The League;” he has a one-hour special coming up on Comedy Central, and is increasingly in demand for commercial endorsements. How did he distinguish himself among the large pack of similarly young, edgy stand-up comics? Well, he’s good—but them a lot of them are good. He is, however, the only one who has a harrowing tale of being a survivor of the 9/11/2001 Twin Towers attack. For more than a decade he has been telling interviewers about his narrow escape, how he was working at Merrill Lynch’s offices on the 54th floor of the South Tower when the first plane struck the North Tower, and how he rushed out of the building and into the street just before the second hijacked plane slammed into the tower he just left. That was an epiphanal moment for Rannazzisi, he has said, and realizing that every second of life was precious and that he was saved for something more important than pushing paper, Rannazzisi quit his conventional day job to pursue a career as a comic.
That back story made Rannazzisi seem uniquely human, appealing, and on a mission. It wouldn’t have boosted his career if he didn’t have the talent to capitalize on it, but he did. To some extent, all of his success has been built on the foundation of the Twin Towers’ fall, so his fans and employers have a dilemma to face: he was lying.The New York Times checked out his account, and determined that the comedian had been working in Midtown on 9-11, never was employed by Merrill Lynch (which had no offices in either tower), and has been lying all these years. This week, Rannazzisi confessed and apologized, saying in part,
“I was not at the Trade Center on that day. I don’t know why I said this. This was inexcusable. I am truly, truly sorry….For many years, more than anything.I have wished that, with silence, I could somehow erase a story told by an immature young man. It only made me more ashamed. How could I tell my children to be honest when I hadn’t come clean about this? It was profoundly disrespectful to those who perished and those who lost loved ones. The stupidity and guilt I have felt for many years has not abated. It was an early taste of having a public persona, and I made a terrible mistake. All I can ask is for forgiveness.”
It’s Kim Davis Day, when we will find out whether the recalcitrant clerk will step aside, allow her deputies to do her job, obey the judge, and not interfere with American couples who want to get married in Kentucky, or, as many expect, will again take her marching orders from God, defy the Supreme Court, start speaking in tongues, or find some other way to make a public nuisance of herself. The latter, we can only hope, will send her back to jail, and give Mike Huckabee, Ted Cruz, Bobby Jindal and some other Republicans an opportunity to grandstand.
The issue this raises for me is: Why would any employer hire someone who reveals themselves as a Davis-level religious zealot?Continue reading →
The second Comment of the Day, from prolific commenter Michael R, explores how the Volkswagen plot may have been nourished by industry-crushing over-regulation.
Ethics Alarms 