Business & Commercial

Announcing a New Ethics Alarms Principal: The Jumanji Axe

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

As regular and long-time readers here know, Ethics Alarms is fond of useful analogies and metaphors from popular culture that illustrate regularly occurring ethics breaches, self-defeating irresponsible conduct, or the proper remedies or reactions to them, in society at large or various segments of it. Hence we have the Barn Door Fallacy, the Julie Principle, the Popeye, the Nelson (“Ha-ha!”), the Ripley, the Costanza, and quite a few others.

I was, just this morning, in a discussion with a bar ethics counsel regarding a serious problem in the legal world. It is a corrupt system that neither the legal profession nor the incompetent news media has let the public know about, one that amounts to a multi-level scandal that hurts everyone except the unscrupulous, greedy lawyers who participate in it. At one point she said to me, “You know, we have had the means available to address this all along, and it never occurred to us even when the solution was not only obvious, but right in our hands.”

And I thought of that moment above from “Jumanji.” At least the kid in the movie had an excuse, since he had been turned into a monkey….

Do you have some current candidates for an Ethics Alarms “Jumanji Axe”? Let me know about them in the comments.

New Ways To Cheat: The Fake Flight Attendant!

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

Tirone Alexander, 35, has been convicted of impersonating a flight attendant at least 120 times in order to get free commercial airline flights between 2018 and 2024 . He also doesn’t know how to spell “Tyrone.”

There is a common airline policy (that I never heard of before) allowing flight attendants and pilots from other airlines to fly for free. Alexander knew about the benefit because he had worked as a flight attendant for regional airlines between 2013 and 2015. He visited airline websites and checked the “flight attendant” option during the online check-in process. There he would find a form asking applicants to list their current employer in the industry, their hiring date, and badge number. Alexander faked all of it and counted on no one bothering to check. No one did.

Almost all examples of audacious cheating and grifting depend on 1) people trusting strangers to be honest, which is, sadly, a mistake; 2) people not doing their jobs diligently, which many don’t; 3) systems that have yawning loopholes that sociopaths can exploit, and 4) the cheater/con artist having boundless audacity.

Number 4 eventually gets most cheaters caught.

Alexander has been found guilty of four counts of wire fraud and one count of fraudulently accessing a restricted area of ​​the airport. He faces decades in prison at his sentencing, which is scheduled for August 25.

Meanwhile, the airlines will be tightening their free flight policies, and maybe eliminating them. As is so often the case, the rare cheat spoils a nice thing for everyone else.

From Boston, a Stunning “King’s Pass” Rejection [Updated!]

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

“The King’s Pass” is #11 on the EA Rationalizations List, where it is described as follows:

One will often hear unethical behavior excused because the person involved is so important, so accomplished, and has done such great things for so many people that we should look the other way, just this once. This is a terribly dangerous mindset, because celebrities and powerful public figures come to depend on it. Their achievements, in their own minds and those of their supporters and fans, have earned them a more lenient ethical standard. This pass for bad behavior is as insidious as it is pervasive, and should be recognized and rejected whenever it raises its slimy head. In fact, the more respectable and accomplished an individual is, the more damage he or she can do through unethical conduct, because such individuals engender great trust.

Sports teams, both professional and amateur, are among the organizations most vulnerable to The King’s Pass, which is also called “The Star Syndrome.” Thus it is particularly satisfying to see the only sports team I care about, the Boston Red Sox, take a strong stand against the rationalization in one of the most vivid anti-#11 moves within memory by any organization in sports or out.

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Greta Thunberg Is Danny Bonaduce

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

Now hear me out.

The National Review has a scalding—but more or less fair—-evisceration of Greta Thunberg, the past-her-pull-date former teen climate change activist. An excerpt:

You remember young Greta, right? The vinegar-rictused, Swedish ecological activist whom the media turned into a global celebrity back in 2018…Who can forget the climax of it all, the legendary comedy of Thunberg’s 2019 United Nations address? Visibly reading from a script and adopting actorly mannerisms — shrieking “HOW DARE YOU?” and bawling about “stolen dreams” and “stolen childhood” — Thunberg condemned the capitalist West for desecrating the hopes of neurotics like herself. “We’ll be watching you,” she warned icily…A neurodivergent teenage girl was granted supreme moral authority over mankind by adults desperate to weaponize her “vulnerability” to club the world into bending to the eco-socialist agenda pushed by her handlers. We were asked to take it all extremely seriously…Hungering for continued relevance, Thunberg responded by escalating her tactics, seeking arrest at anti-mining and anti-oil protests across Europe to garner headlines. But the media reaction was tepid, and the thrill was gone. It surprised me not the slightest bit when she instantly transitioned from environmental activism (old and busted) to pro-Palestinian activism (new and sexy with the kids these days) in the wake of the October 7 massacre. A year later, she was performatively arresting herself on podcast appearances to signal her solidarity with Hamas.

The bombardment ends with this: “As for myself, I couldn’t care less about Thunberg’s fate. If the Israeli Navy wants to hole her boat below the waterline as the French did to sink the Rainbow Warrior, then it’s no problem of mine. I don’t ever want to write about her again, and unless she escalates to suicide bombing, I intend not to. For as much as her astringent mien and unearned pretense make her a figure of comedy, I find her morally repulsive.”

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“Oh, And We Have Deadly Snakes In Our Yard…”

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

The Ethicist (Kwame Appiah to his friends and NYU students) gets a lot of questions about a common dilemma: what kind of things does a selling homeowner have an ethical duty to inform a potential buyer about? My favorite version of this issue—because you know how I am—involves houses where horrible murders have taken place, or ones that are rumored to be haunted.

Most of these non-horror movie situations are solved by a strict adherence to the Golden Rule. Would you want to be told that a property has X? If so, tell the potential buyer. Yeah, being ethical may cost you some money, or even a sale. Nobody ever said being ethical was easy or always beneficial to the ethical actor.

Last week Kwame was asked by condo seller of she was bound to tell a potential buyer that the condo association uses “pesticides, herbicides and other chemical treatments” that environmentalists regard as harmful, even though they are legal. The seller has been part of a group trying to force the association to go “green” without success. The Ethicist’s answer was reasonable: if the condo association was obeying local laws and ordinances, the dispute was none of the purchaser’s business until after the property was transferred. “[W]hen it comes to selling your unit, your responsibility doesn’t extend to reshaping a buyer’s worldview,” he wrote. “Those who dissent should make their case for reform, but disclosure is usually reserved for departures from what is recognized and approved — from what a reasonable person would anticipate. You’re free to voice your concerns. You’re not required to.”

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Comment of the Day: “BREAKING! Verizon Sucks!”

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

Much thanks is due to Ryan Harkins for helping to keep this from becoming “Jake Tapper is an Asshole” Tuesday with some thoughtful commentary about why customer service is almost universally terrible. This comes in the wake of my beginning a vendetta against Verizon, which damaged my business, lied, cost me money, wasted my time, raised my blood pressure, and made it all worse by generously offering me eight dollars and change for my trouble.

Here is Ryan’s Comment of the Day on the post “Breaking! Verizon Sucks!”

***

My wife and I just encountered a situation with Spectrum, for internet services, and Ameritas, for life insurance. In each case, speaking with a different customer service representative ended up in wildly different stories and results, and in each case has left us angry and considering cancelling and seeking another company.

On the Ameritas front, my wife has a life insurance policy that was issued when she was a baby (I’m not permitted to say how many years ago, but she’s an early Millennial…), and we’ve been dutifully paying the annual premium for years for the $50k whole life policy. The problem is that since the policy is so old, the company apparently has no idea how to handle it anymore. It isn’t available to view through their website. Apparently it can’t be converted to a different policy that is able to be posted online. When discussing what to do moving forward, we’ve been told

  • We’ve actually paid all the premiums, and now we have the policy in full, no further payments are needed until an unknown date a few years from now
  • We’ve actually paid all the premiums, and now we have the policy in full, no further payments are needed until an unknown date far in the future
  • We haven’t paid all the premiums and need to pay late fees for not paying this last year’s premium
  • We don’t have to pay late fees, but we do need to pay the premium (that we’ve already paid)
  • We’ve not paid the premium that we have paid and are in danger of losing our policy altogether
  • We’ve not paid the premium that we have paid and our policy is changing into a different, inferior type of policy

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BREAKING! Verizon Sucks!

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

For the nearly four days Verizon’s incompetence cost me, including two angry clients, one lost assignment that would have earned me at least $200, a missed bill payment that resulted in a penalty of 22 bucks, and over four hours wasted on phone calls and technicians, the company just texted me what its penance would be. Here’s the full text:

“Due to a service outage, we’ve issued a credit of $8.61 that will appear soon in your account.”

Anticipating this, yesterday I tried to get through to a human being in Customer Service to register my objections to both the Verizon service I received (and didn’t receive) over those four days, and my conclusion that the company owed me a lot more than just compensation for the time the internet and phone weren’t working. First I was trapped in a loop trying to sell me various products and services offered by Verizon’s “partners.” Next I reached an AI who mimicked a human being, even saying “um” here and there, who wouldn’t stop talking even when I did my best Michael Palin impression from the immortal “Travel Agent Sketch” (his screaming “SHUT UP!” begins at around the four minute mark)….

On my third try, I was told that a live representative would pick up after an estimated “13 minute” wait; the wait time was really 44 minutes. Then I was told that I had reached the repair department, but I was promised that I would be forwarded to a live person “who can help you” without dealing with recordings and AI liars. After a half hour of the most horrible elevator music since Montovani played “The Pina Colada Song,” I hung up.

I can’t even buy a good straight-edge razor to go on my planned “Sweeney Todd” rampage for $8.61.”

On Qatar, Air Force One, And the Lying News Media

/ Jack Marshall / 28 Comments

Another week, another fake news story designed to undermine President Trump.

I must say, I admire the New York Times headline: “Trump is said to be planning to accept a luxury 747 from Qatar for use as Air Force One.” You see, “Trump” isn’t getting a 747 from the Middle Eastern Arab nation at all. The United States is. But, see, “Trump” is said to be getting the gift by Democrats and slimy journalists, so that’s the news. But people lying about what the President does isn’t news, it’s SOP, so why would this be worth a story? In fact, the headline only tells us someone or someones are saying that Trump is planning to accept the gift. That’s another one of my favorite kinds of fake news: psychic fake news, with the sources being unknown “sayers.”

ABC’s Jonathan Karl tweeted out a perfect example of how the news media distorts the news by manipulating the context. He tweeted yesterday,

“ABC EXCLUSIVE: President Trump is poised to accept a luxury jet as a gift from Qatar. It’s to be used as Air Force One and then transferred to the Trump library by January 2029. Perhaps the biggest foreign gift ever. DOJ insists it’s legal, not bribery, not violation of emoluments clause.”

Let’s see: the President will be accepting the jet on behalf of the nation, as Presidents do. The DOJ doesn’t have to “insist” that it’s not bribery, not illegal and not a violation of the [dead, inapplicable and never enforced] Emoluments Clause, because gifts to the U.S. are not personal gifts to the President, are legal, are not bribery, and the Emoluments Clause, one of the Axis’s Big Lie impeachment theories [Plan C], “has nothing to do with the price of beans,” as my father liked to say. Article I, Section 9, Paragraph 8 of the Constitution prohibits federal officeholders from receiving any gift, payment, or other thing of value from a foreign state or its rulers, officers, or representatives without Congressional approval. Again, Trump personally isn’t being given anything.

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The Unethical Attack On SNAP Expenditures On Coca-Cola Products and Junk Food

/ Jack Marshall / 29 Comments

Back in my first year of law school we studied a case involving poor D.C. residents spending financial assistance checks on non-essentials like furniture thanks to a special deal offered by a local store. My contracts professor, the legendary Richard Alan Gordon, gave an impassioned speech decrying the court’s conclusion that the store’s promotion was wrong and the money was misused. “Why is sustenance for the soul less essential than sustenance for the body?” he asked in his famous stentorian tones.

Okay, food stamp recipients spending them on Coca-Cola products is not quite in the same exalted territory as the life enhancements at the center of that case (I can’t recall it the case cite), but to me, the principle is the same. Conservatives are on the wrong side of this ethics debate. I don’t care if Coca-Cola makes a lot of money off of food stamps. People enjoy their products. They make people happy. Poor people deserve to be happy too now and then in the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the Health and Human Services Secretary, and Brooke Rollins, the Agriculture Secretary, both advocate stripping soft drinks and junk food from SNAP, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. RFKJ has called for the government to stop allowing the nearly $113 billion program that serves about 42 million Americans to be spent on “ soda or processed foods.” “The one place that I would say that we need to really change policy is the SNAP program and food stamps and in school lunches,” Kennedy told Fox News. “There, the federal government in many cases is paying for it. And we shouldn’t be subsidizing people to eat poison.”

Well, one man’s poison is another man’s pudding. Rollins has said, “When a taxpayer is putting money into SNAP, are they OK with us using their tax dollars to feed really bad food and sugary drinks to children who perhaps need something more nutritious?” No, the correct question is whether Americans think that the poor and low of income should have taxpayers lightening their burden and allowing them to make the same choices regarding the pursuit of happiness that anyone else has, within practical limits.

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If Only MSNBC Hosts Could Be Explained This Way…

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

Last year, Australian Radio Network’s CADA station, broadcasting from Sydney, introduced a perky young female host (above) who called herself “Thy.” Her popular show called “Workdays with Thy” featured music for four hours a day from Monday to Friday with the pleasant-sounding young woman chattering away between songs and ads.

It took about six months for inquiring minds to started asking questions about who Thy was and where she came from, since she never gave her last name and no biographical information seemed to exist on her anywhere. Some listeners also claimed on social media that certain phrases she liked to use sounded identical every time. CADA eventually had to admit that Thy didn’t exist: “she” was an “it,” a direct kin of Siri, a bot whose AI-generated software had been developed by the voice-cloning firm ElevenLabs. This was a six month “experiment.”

The network issued a statement, saying, “This is a space being explored by broadcasters globally, and while the trial has offered valuable insights, it’s also reinforced the unique value that personalities bring to creating truly compelling content.” Why would anyone believe that? Sirius-XM had Wolfman Jack hosting a Sixties radio show for years using his old tapes and remastered versions of the songs he played even though he died a decade before without the satellite network ever telling listeners that this Wolfman was just a recording. It has been doing the same thing recently on its Seventies channel with Casey Kasem’s old “Top 40” show, without bothering reveal that Casey died with dementia in 2014 after retiring in 2009.

Maybe it’s just me, but I find AI disc jockeys less creepy than dead ones, and a station using either without letting listeners know is unethical.

Not as unethical, however, as featuring live hosts like Simone Sanders and even arguably live ones like Chris Matthews.