Business & Commercial

Thank you, Donald Trump

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

I can't bear to post another picture of Donald Trump, so I'm using this cute Jack Russell puppy's photo instead. I would also vote for the puppy for President before I would vote for Donald Trump.

I had been having misgivings about annointing Donald Trump the Ethics Alarms Jerk of the Year last spring, since so many strong contenders emerged as the year went on—Rev. Terry Jones, Alec Baldwin, Newt, Leroy Fick, of course, and others. Trump, however, took matters in hand, and locked up his award with a flourish by announcing yesterday that he had forsaken the Republican Party and was seriously considering a third party run  for the presidency. For reaffirming my original assessment, thank-you, Donald Trump.  For everything else, curses are more appropriate.

The man is totally without shame. Two weeks ago, he was fully prepared to be the moderator of a GOP candidates debate…a blatant and outrageous conflict of interest for anyone who had the faintest glimmer of a presidential bid still in what passes for his mind. When all but the equally shameless Newt Gingrich and the desperate Rick Santorum declined to be Trump’s props, he withdrew as moderator, and now this. Is he running for President out of spite? I suppose that would be more admirable than his earlier fake pass at a run, which was evidently designed to pump up ratings for his reality show. This public buffoon is willing to distort the democratic process and throw a monkey wrench into an extraordinarily important national election on a whim, a lark, or a hissy fit. Continue reading →

Dear Ethics Alarms: We Are Stealing Your Content. Love and Happy Hollidays, The Making Relationships Site

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

I think this is strange.

Yes, it's true: Nelson may be running a relationship website.

Ethics Alarms got a trackback, which means that a website notified me that it had used a post here. I get these all the time, and sometimes it leads me to a new source of ideas, or new professional relationship. A site has quoted or re-posted some or all of an essay, and that is fine with me.

This trackback led me to a website called “The Making Relationships Site,” and there was my recent post about Zenas Zelotes, the Connecticut lawyer who argues that it’s good for a lawyer to have a romantic relationship with his client. What wasn’t there was a link to the blog, a reference to Ethics Alarms, or any credit to me as the author. My post was presented as the original content of  The Making Relationships Site. The re=post permitted no comments, so I couldn’t write a “What the hell are you doing?” comment, and the site includes no information about who operates it or how to contact webmaster.

But whoever it is was kind enough to let me know, via the trackback, that it had stolen my post. This is the fickish behavior of being candid about being unethical, which also carries an implication of shamelessness, and a dash of Nelson Muntz, the bully on The Simpsons whose reaction to everybody’s misfortune is to point and laugh.

I’m not especially worked up about the theft itself. I don’t like it, but I assume my work will be lifted without attribution from time to time; it goes with the job, though stealing articles about ethics has an especially oxymoronic tinge.

But for a site to make sure that I know about it is strange. Now I’m send it a trackback, so the operators know that  The Making Relationships Site is the first official online fick.

Why Would Anyone Trust A Company That Tricks Them Into Opening Its Junk Mail?

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

" Disclaimer: This document isn't intended to be as misleading as it obviously is."

The firm is Ideal Tax Solutions, and I’m sure, really I am, that the people who run it, which include lawyers bound by the professional ethics rules prohibiting them from engaging in misrepresentation, dishonesty, deceit or fraud, are dedicated and well-intentioned. From an ethics stand-point, however, why anyone would trust a company that markets its services in a blatantly misleading way is beyond my comprehension. Someone must; a lot of someones must. Yet the company introduces itself to potential customers by deceiving them.

The letter arrives in an envelope that works very hard to look like it will contain an official IRS document. The mailing stamp has an elaborate eagle and flag logo; a large 2011 is posted in the lower right-hand column. Also there: a statute number TITLE 18 SEC. 1702 US CODE. There is a window in the envelope, and the address that is visible appears on institutional pink paper.

Oh-oh. Continue reading →

Punishing Corrupt Companies Without Punishing the People Who Make Them Corrupt

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

By all means, fine corrupt companies, but we need a new dress code for their management.

From The National Law Journal, December 8:

“The Justice Department has announced that Wachovia Bank N.A., now known as Wells Fargo Bank N.A., will pay $148 million to federal and state agencies after admitting to anti-competitive activity in the municipal bond investments market.”

I understand why the Justice Department, the SEC and other federal agencies fine companies huge amounts for what is essentially criminal conduct, choosing negotiated settlements rather than engaging in time-consuming trials that would cost taxpayers money and risk failing for reasons ranging from investigator error to skillful defense strategy. Nevertheless, the policy encourages rather than discourages unethical conduct by corporate decision-makers. It  does nothing to improve a culture that tends to define a bad business practice as a gamble that doesn’t work, or a scheme that gets discovered. Continue reading →

Comment of the Day: “Unethical Website of the Month: The Florida Family Association”

/ Jack Marshall / Leave a comment

Proam comments on boycotts, in today’s Comment of the Day regarding the post, Unethical Website of the Month: The Florida Family Association:

“Unless I am mistaken, The American Family Association (AFA) has a long-running and ongoing boycott call against the other large hardware chain, Home Depot, stemming from the corporation’s continued kindness toward persons whose sexual practices are objectionable to AFA. To my knowledge, Home Depot has not caved. I don’t know whether the AFA-led boycott has had any effect on Home Depot’s business. I wonder if Lowe’s examined Home Depot’s situation prior to its decision – if it’s even relevant.

“Over time, I have become a much more selective and reluctant boycott-joiner. I would like to think that any boycott I might join would be so justified, so humanitarian, so economically and morally and ethically correct, that even the collateral damages and unintended consequences would be tolerably recoverable, or “for the best in the long run” – but I know I’m dreaming. A boycott just seems more and more to me like a “nuclear option” a la Hiroshima and Nagasaki. One day I may feel I have no other option, but then, I will know ahead of time that abiding by it (a boycott) won’t soothe me any more than having never taken part in it, even if I ‘win’.”

Alec Baldwin, Something of the Year

/ Jack Marshall / 24 Comments

I should have known I was going to regret naming Donald Trump the Ethics Alarms “Jerk of the Year” in May. True, The Donald has only burnished his credentials since then, but other worthy candidates have charged into what would be contention for the crown, had I not rashly bestowed it on Trump, confident that nobody could be a bigger jerk than a man who sided with the birthers while using the crucial presidential nominating process as a crude promotion for his cheesy reality show.

But 2011 has been a banner year for jerks, uber-jerks, and beyond-jerks. There was Rev. Terry Jones, for example, who got people killed by threatening to burn a Koran. He blew right past jerk to asshole, so Trump was spared having to compete with him. There was Leroy Fick, the despicable lottery millionaire who kept getting food stamps after his bonanza, because of a loophole in the Michigan food stamp regulations. He inspired a whole new category for himself,  fick, which describes an especially shameless jerk.

Now, however, I am faced with a serious dilemma. What is an appropriately severe designation for actor (and alleged New York mayoral hopeful, which is disturbing on so many levels) Alec Baldwin, who in addition to revealing himself as a 9-11 conspiracy theorist earlier this year, just behaved like a spoiled child on an American Airlines flight, got himself kicked off to the inconvenience of his fellow passengers, and insulted the airline and the plane’s crew afterwards on Twitter?  Continue reading →

Incompetent Elected Official of the Month: California State Senator Ted Lieu

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

Sen. Lieu wants Lowe's to see things his way...or else.

In what is beginning to look like a full-blown ethics train wreck, the Florida Family Association’s attack on TLC’s “All-American Muslim” reality show has claimed its first victim among the show’s defenders: California State Senator Ted Lieu, a Democrat. The incident inspired him to out himself as a Constitutionally ignorant bully who can’t be trusted with legislative power. Thanks, Florida Family Association!

This was only after Lowe’s, the lumber, hardware, garden supply chain, outed itself as a sniveling confederacy of unprincipled cowards by caving to the FFA’s boycott threat, a threat motivated by anti-Muslim bigotry and nothing else. Lowe’s pulled its sponsorship of the show, muttering nonsense about how the show was controversial and how such controversies should be left to communities to hash out, which was a non sequitur and offensive, as it suggested that whether or not bigotry is acceptable in America is a valid debate topic, and that Lowe’s has no opinion on the matter. How refreshing it would be if a company like Lowe’s, capitulating to a boycott threat, came right out and said, Continue reading →

So Who Do We Trust To Fight Crony Capitalism?

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

Shut out of the last Iowa debate because of low poll numbers, earnest, honest, ethical, reasonable, intelligent and boring candidate Jon Huntsman gave his assessment of the event to ABC’s Christiane Amanpour, saying that the main issue facing the country was a trust deficit:

“The most important issue of all was not even touched upon and that is the deficit of trust we have in the United States, in fact it may have played right into the trust deficit. That is, nobody trusts Congress anymore. We need term limits in Congress, we need to close the revolving door that allows members of Congress to move right on into the lobbying profession. No one has trust anymore towards the executive branch, no one trusts Wall Street with the banks that are too big to fail. So I would argue that the issues that are most salient in our political dialogue today were not even touched upon last night…”

Huntsman is right. It was especially astounding that this issue wasn’t addressed in the debate (and that those crack moderators Diane Sawyer and George Stephanopoulos  didn’t mention it) after more than a month of Occupy Everywhere protests that sorta-kinda dealt with the trust issue (oh,  what a little focus could have wrought!)  and the recent “60 Minutes”  expose on insider trading by members of Congress. Also preceding the debate was this trust-buster: in July of 2008, Bush Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson held a meeting with select Wall Street fund managers and gave them advance notice of government action that they could use to make significant profits: Continue reading →

Occupy Manny

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

Sing it, Manny! "You load 16 tons, and what do you get? Another day older and a pro-rated 20 million dollars a year.."

I admit it: Manny Ramirez’s existence is a constant irritant to me. I regard him as epitomizing the worst tendencies of professional sports stars, and the attitudes of the most conscience-free who walk among us who make/ society and the culture a little bit worse every day. I was thrilled when his baseball career came to an appropriately sordid end, with his being caught using performance enhancing drugs and retiring o avoid having to serve his suspension, and nauseated when he announced the end of his retirement a few weeks ago, hoping to lure some addled team owner into paying him a million dollars or so to hit home runs and loaf.

Now, thanks to the research skills of baseball blogger Craig Calcaterra, my morning began by learning that Manny is also akin to the recording stars, Hollywood actors, rich politicians and toadying business executives who have tried to pass themselves off as Occupy Wall Street’s virtuous and harshly exploited 99% despite all reason and evidence to the contrary. In an interview in Spanish, Manny was explaining that he might have to travel to Japan to play ball again, and said,“Somos un obrero y donde quiera que haya trabajo hay que ir a trabajar;” in English: “We are the working class and must go where there is work.”

“Working class!” Continue reading →

Unethical Website of the Month: The Florida Family Association

/ Jack Marshall / 47 Comments

"Hey, wait---where are the terrorists?"

Organized bigotry is un-American, and organized bigotry under the banner of American values is misrepresentation. That’s what can be found on the Florida Family Association website here, as it simultaneously engages in several of Ethics Alarms’ most deplored conduct: bias, dishonestly accusing others of bias, bullying, boycotting, and worst of all having success at bullying and boycotting. I suppose I should add to that list making its readers stupid, because its arguments will do that too.

The Florida Family Association is offended by The Learning Channel’s latest reality show, “All-American Muslim,” which shows American citizens who happen to be Muslims pretty much living, acting and sounding like you and me, except when they are practicing their religion. I think it is, unlike most TLC series, an excellent idea. American attitudes toward  Muslims since September 11, 2001 are substantially based on ignorance, the kissing cousin of bigotry and the mother of fear. Learning more about American Muslims can only be beneficial to all, but The Florida Family Association views the program as a plot:

“The Learning Channel’s new show ‘All-American Muslim’ is propaganda clearly designed to counter legitimate and present-day concerns about many Muslims who are advancing Islamic fundamentalism and Sharia law.  The show profiles only Muslims that appear to be ordinary folks while excluding many Islamic believers whose agenda poses a clear and present danger to liberties and traditional values that the majority of Americans cherish.” Continue reading →