Character

Happy 2012! Your New Year’s Ethics Quiz: “Firing Super-Clerk”

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

Last week, convenience store clerk Eric Henderson was confronted by two female robbers in Pensacola, Florida who demanded that he hand over the cash in his Circle K register.  Henderson  grabbed the gun pointed at him by one of the women, slammed her to the ground, and then chased the two into the street where they fled in a getaway car.

Henderson was promptly fired by Circle K  for violating a company policy that forbids heroics by employees in the middle of attempted robberies. Now Henderson has gone to the media, which is pointing out that he had been unemployed for two years (Occupy Circle K! But how long he had been out of work should have no bearing on the decision whether to to fire him) and that according to Henderson, the unarmed robber was urging her armed companion to shoot him. (Aside: Some of the news accounts also included this hilarious line: “The 30-year-old grabbed the gun pointed at him by one of the alleged robbers…“ Alleged robbers? Can we all agree that when there is an actual  gun to be grabbed, the term “alleged” is idiotic? What else is someone who points a gun at a convenience store clerk? A practical joker? Some one who wants to trade a Glock for Twinkies?)

Your New Year’s Day Ethics Quiz: Was Circle K right to fire Eric? Continue reading →

Philidelphia’s Conflicted, Shameless, Greedy—But Law-Abiding!— City Council

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

In the City of Brotherly Love, why shouldn't the City Council show a little love to itself--and its members' bank accounts?

Philadelphia, a city that like all cities these days is reeling under budget deficits, contemplating harsh cuts in city services and programs and raising taxes, is receiving a cruel lesson in the limits of public-mindedness by elected officials when the price is right.

Philadelphia City Councilwoman Marian Tasco retired yesterday, collected $478,057 in pension payments, and then plans to return to work after she is sworn-in on Monday to serve her seventh term. Register of Wills Ronald Donatucci retired Dec. 23 and will also return to work on Monday. He collected $366,797.

Why are they doing this? Because they can. Because it’s a lot of money. Because nobody can stop them. In Tasco’s case, because her irresponsible, disengaged, foolish constituency voted her into office despite ample warning that this is what she had planned. Continue reading →

A Frightening Figure, Setting Off Ethics Alarms

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

We don't even know how to play Russian Roulette responsibly.

On Friday, the day before Christmas Eve when much of America was thinking about sugar plums,  lay-away plans, and protesting Christmas pageants, the Federal Accounting Office released its analysis of  the net present value of the nation’s Social Security and Medicare obligations, “net present value” being  the total funds that would have to be set aside today to pay the costs of these programs in the future. Seldom do figures so clearly indict the unethical practices and statements of so many.

In fiscal 2011, the cost of the catching up on the required funding of Medicare and Social Security rose from $30.9 trillion to $33.8 trillion. That $2.9 trillion increase should be regarded as adding to the $1.3 trillion cash deficit for fiscal 2011, making a $4.2 trillion deficit—and this coming in a year in which the rising national debt was supposedly recognized, at last, as a threat to America’s stability, prosperity, and welfare. The costs of Social Security and Medicare are rising at a frightening rate, nearly doubling in the last decade, with little or nothing being done to address the problem. And there is good reason to believe that the Medicare estimates are based on unrealistic assumptions. The GAO report also includes an alternate, less rosy scenario (or perhaps “more putrid” is a better phrase) in which the projected Social Security-Medicare debt is more than $46 trillion. How serious is that? Well, the combined value of the equity in U.S. homes and the value of all publicly-traded companies is less than 20 trillion dollars.

What do these figures tell us about the ethics of the various players on the national scene? Continue reading →

Unethical Quote of the Week: Patrick Lott

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

Patrick Lott, hard working role model

“I have always given my best and tried to be a great role model. No one is perfect. Thanks for the memories.”

—-Patrick Lott, Assistant principal at Bernardsville Middle School in Somerville, New Jersey, in a cryptic Facebook post earlier this month that was explained, sort of, when he was arrested for allegedly using a hidden camera to videotape boys in the Immaculata High School showers for a period of nearly three years.

I say “allegedly” because people get mad at me when I don’t, and because he hasn’t been tried and convicted yet. On the other hand, videos of nude teenagers showering were found in his home. Maybe they flew in the window.

“Nobody’s perfect” is one of the great and infuriating rationalizations used by scoundrels and their apologists,  and goes hand in hand with all the other clichés designed to discourage people from making the kind of ethical judgments that keep societal standards sturdy, ethical, and clear. It is right up there with “It’s not the worst thing” and “Judge not, lest ye not be judged” as bumper sticker dodges that set my teeth on edge, but “Nobody’s perfect” may be the most outrageous of all….at least when employed by someone like Lott.

There is a pretty big chasm between “perfect” and taking secret videos of naked kids when you are a trusted school administrator. This guy couldn’t see “perfect” with the Hubble telescope. And he says he’s always given his best—-this was his best? I shudder to think about what Lott would have done if he wasn’t trying so hard. He tried to be a great role model? For who…Penn State assistant coaches?

Lott’s statement is an outrageous plea for sympathy for all the wrong reasons. His best would have been to seek help of find another line of work when he realized he couldn’t control his desire to watch naked young boys. Trying to be a great role model begins with not breaking the law. And  one who behaves outrageously should not insult the rest of humanity by trying to suggest that we’re really not so different. Oh yes we are.

This is Lott’s disgrace, Lott’s shame, and Lott’s crime. The very least he should be able to do is accept responsibility, and not try to minimize his misconduct or suggest that it’s not all that different from overeating or going 45 in a 35 mph zone.

Spin, Rationalizations and Denial From the Ron Paul Faithful: An Ethics Lesson

/ Jack Marshall / 23 Comments

What does Fred Astaire in blackface have to do with Ron Paul? Not much.

There are a lot of reasons to regard Rep. Ron Paul, currently facing what should be his last hurrah in the idiosyncratic Iowa Caucuses, as the model for politics and leadership as we wish it could be. He says what he means. He doesn’t pander. He isn’t afraid of uncomfortable truths. He has integrity. This explains why the supporters of the one true libertarian in the U.S. Congress seem ready to fight to the end to preserve his presidential candidacy, though its long-term prospects are about the same as those of Frosty being elected President of Hell. They are, as a result, providing the rest of us with a textbook example of how loyalty and dedication can spawn intellectual dishonesty, cause otherwise good and intelligent people to substitute rationalizations for reason, and lead to corruption. How did all those idealistic young lawyers end up in jail supporting the plots of Richard Nixon?  Why did otherwise honest and ethical Democrats, elected officials and feminists twist their principles into pretzels to defend Bill Clinton’s using White House staff as a personal dating bar and lying about it under oath?  This is how. When you believe that a leader is good, then affirmative proof of flaws that disqualify him for leadership must be justified and explained away. It often isn’t even a conscious decision: this is cognitive dissonance at its strongest. The results, however, are the same as intentional deception.

Over at The Daily Caller, Wesley Messamore, who is Editor in Chief of the HumbleLibertarian.com, has registered an impassioned and angry defense against Paul critics who, like me, regard the content of his newsletters from the Eighties and Nineties an automatic disqualification for Paul as a presidential nominee. I don’t mean to pick on Messamore: his arguments are typical of Paul defenders; he’s no worse than the rest. His article, however, neatly covers all the unethical tactics Paul’s followers have had to embrace to convince themselves that their hero hasn’t failed the leadership test.

Here they are: Continue reading →

Comment of the Day: “Ethics Quiz: The Case of the Fake But Accurate Social Security Card”

/ Jack Marshall / Leave a comment

My ethics conundrum regarding the fake but accurate Social Security card solution—the Dan Rather approach, if you will— continued to garner a wide range of responses. Rick, as usual, has delivered one of the most thoughtful and provocative, and it is a worthy Comment of the Day.

Here is his comment on “Ethics Quiz: The Case of the Fake But Accurate Social Security Card”:

It strikes me that sometimes—not always, but sometimes—ethics is on a continuum. There’s the truly ethical, the not unethical, and the unethical, with many finer distinctions to be made.

I don’t running screaming into the night at the idea of faking a card, under the circumstances. Still, the truly ethical thing to do in this situation is to tell the prospective employer the truth. And the availability of all those other possible means of identification is indeed relevant. Provide one of the non-Social Security card alternatives and whatever other documentation is available. Importantly, if the employer, for whatever reason, is unwilling to accept this legally sufficient documentation, you don’t want to work for this person, no matter how much you need a job. Continue reading →

The Drunk, the Bar and the Missing ID

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

I’ve been considering starting a continuing category for unethical law suits, but what interests me about this story is that it coincides with a sudden flurry of new comments on the Shannon Stone post. That concerned the man who fell to his death at a Texas Rangers game last summer after lunging to catch a foul ball for his son. My post argued that when someone does something unequivocally reckless and foolish that leads to his injury and death,  it may be legally advantageous to sue third parties for not anticipating the situation and providing prophylactic safety measures, but is unethical to do so.

It was not one of my more popular posts.

This story, from South Carolina, raises a similar issue. Paraplegic Chelsea Hess is suing Jock’s Sports Grill  because the bartender failed to check her ID and didn’t determine whether she was already intoxicated when, at the age of 20 (in 2009), she drank, drove, and crashed her car, causing her current condition. Hess is also suing the state Department of Transportation, saying the agency failed to properly maintain the shoulder of the road where her car crashed. Continue reading →

Ethics Hero: Julio Diaz

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

[This story, from National Public Radio’s Storycorps, is three years old. But an Ethics Hero is an Ethics Hero whether Ethics Alarms recognizes him or not, and this is a Dickensian tale if there ever was one, about a man whose ethical instinct are so impeccable that they make me feel terribly inadequate. Ethics Alarms reader and commenter Tim LeVier brought it to my attention….thanks, Tim, once again.]

In February of 2008, 31-year-old social worker Julio Diaz, as he often does,  ended his hour-long subway commute to the Bronx one stop early so he could have dinner  at his favorite diner. Diaz was walking toward the subway stairs when a teenage boy with a knife stopped him and demanded his wallet.

“Here you go,” said Diaz.  As the teen walked away, Diaz added, on an impulse, “Hey, wait a minute. You forgot something. If you’re going to be robbing people for the rest of the night, you might as well take my coat to keep you warm.” The mugger was stunned. “He asked me, ‘Why are you doing this?'” Diaz’s reply: “Listen, if you’re willing to risk your freedom for a few dollars,  you must really need the money. I was going to get dinner and if you want to join me,  you’re more than welcome.” Continue reading →

Ethics Quiz: The Case of the Fake But Accurate Social Security Card

/ Jack Marshall / 27 Comments

A conundrum I have been asked to solve:

A mother is working to get her foreign adopted child a new copy of his Social Security card, which was lost. The child is a citizen since infancy, and a SS number has been assigned to him, but the process for a naturalized alien to get another is long and fraught with red tape, delays and frustration. So far, replacing the card has taken ten months, though it was supposed to take three. Now the son is waiting for the card to be issued. Social Security says it is waiting for final approval from Immigration, and Immigration says that there is a bottle neck, but not to worry.

Meanwhile, the boy has a standing job offer for a job that he is excited about and that would help family finances considerably. He cannot be processed without a Social Security card, however. And the job will not be held open forever.

For $250, a friend of the mother’s can get a counterfeit Social Security card with the son’s real number on it. He can have it in a week,

Your Question, in the last Ethics Quiz of 2011:

Granted that getting such a fake card is illegal, is it unethical?

None of the agencies involved dispute his citizenship, that he is enrolled in Social Security or that his number is valid. He has a document from Social Security that lists his number. The fake card would not assert anything that wasn’t true, except that he actually had the official card. He would be offering fake proof, but fake proof of something that is undisputed and true.

Is this one of the rare cases when conduct would be both illegal and ethical?

I’ll take your responses and update this with commentary later.

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 →