Citizenship

The Supreme Court Saves An Ethics Principle

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

Mayor Quimby is honest about being corrupt. Isn't that good enough?

Rescuing the states’ power to insist on more ethical conduct from their elected legislators, The U.S. Supreme Court ruled Monday that there was no Constitutional prohibition on state rules against legislators voting on issues in which they have a private, personal interests.

The unanimous decision upheld a Nevada ethics law that governs when lawmakers recuse themselves from voting on official business because they might have conflicts of interest. The challenge to the  law came from Michael Carrigan, a conflicted city council member from the Sparks, Nev., who was reprimanded by the state ethics commission after he voted  on a casino proposal though his campaign manager had been hired as a consultant to the project.

The law prohibits a public official from voting on an issue when a “reasonable person” would suspect a conflict because of financial ties or the interest of a spouse or family member. This is the essence of “the appearance of impropriety.” It also includes “any other commitment or relationship that is substantially similar” to those spelled out.  Carrigan had argued that the Nevada’s law was overly broad and that he should be able to vote on the project, so long as he disclosed his relationship with the consultant.

Ah, disclosure! Continue reading →

Ethics Hero: Rep. Ron Paul

/ Jack Marshall / 24 Comments

One of the benefits of absolutist ethical systems is that they can force you to maintain your integrity when unethical positions are convenient or temporarily beneficial. So it was that libertarian Rep. Ron Paul (R-Tx) emerged from Monday’s New Hampshire debate among GOP Presidential hopefuls as the only candidate who rejected limiting the participation of gays in the military and the infamous “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” policy. While Herman Cain, Michele Bachmann, Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum (naturally), Newt Gingrich and Tim Pawlenty all said, in various and convoluted ways, that they supported DADT, Paul cut precisely to what is ethically offensive about the policy.

“We have to remember, rights don’t come in groups,” Paul said. “We shouldn’t have gay rights. Rights come as individuals….it would be behavior that would count, not the person who belongs to which group.”

I am far, far from being a Ron Paul fan, for his libertarian principles lead him to as many irresponsible positions as ethical ones. And he is certainly emboldened to risk the displeasure of the Republican base as a candidate with about as much chance of getting the Republican nomination as I do (though more of a chance than Newt Gingrich).  But on a night when six of his rivals pandered to homophobia and embraced a policy that both violates core American values and endorses lying, Ron Paul alone had the courage and principle to correctly place “Don’t Ask” where it belongs, in conflict with the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.

Comment of the Day on “Girl Talk and Bigotry Ethics…”

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

We had it coming, apparently...

This comment, from new visitor Linda, exemplifies the kind of thinking that too many Americans believe pass for “ethics.”  In response to my post about a Christiane Amanpour-led  panel on her Sunday morning public issues show that celebrated male-bashing and gender bias, Linda’s response is essentially…

1. You “men” have done worse to us.

2. We have the right to get even.

3. You can dish it out but you can’t take it.

4. We have the right to be bigots too.

Indeed women do have the right to be bigots, but journalists like Amanpour abuse their own First Amendment rights when they use the freedom of the press to advance naked bigotry, and women like her panelists disgrace their own principles when they move from seeking fair and equal treatment for themselves to asserting superiority and advocating gender bias. Continue reading →

Comment of the Day on “Ethics Triple Dunces…”

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

[In his Comment of the Day, Jeffrey Field endorses the actions of both the teacher and the superintendent that I labeled “ethics triple dunces” for making students write letters lobbying for more money in school budgets, raises some other provocative ethics issues related to teacher and student conduct, and questions my indictment of the ethics of the teaching profession. I think he’s wrong on every count (you can read my response with my original post), but it’s a terrific comment.]

“When I was a 5th grade teacher teacher at Clements school in North Alabama, the all-white Limestone County School Board voted to allow students the Martin Luther King holiday, but teachers would be required to work that day. So, partially in self interest and partially in empathy of the small percentage of black teachers, I got my 5th grade class to write letters to the board asking them to reconsider. Long story short, the board reversed position and everybody got a day off.

“Yes, I used this as a writing exercise, and I offer no excuses. You see, too many times teachers have students write a paper with no real purpose in mind. In this case, my students had a real purpose in penning a persuasive letter to the people who ran the schools (btw – no one was required to write the letter, but they all did). And boy, you should have seen the smiles and heard the whoops of joy the morning the Athens News Courier ran a story saying the board had reconsidered its position. Continue reading →

Ethics TRIPLE Dunces: Tramway Elementary Teacher Melanie Hawes and Lee County Board of Education Superintendant Jeff Moss

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

"MUST...WRITE...LETTER ....TO...DAD....

North Carolina state legislator Mike Stone is a budget hawk, and is supporting a budget-cutting proposal that could eliminate 9,300 positions in the public schools. It’s a contentious issue, and the representative has received many letters—including a plaintive one from his own third grader daughter, a student at Tramway Elementary, who was one of several students in her class directed by teacher Melanie Hawes to write to the  Republican and plead with him to save the jobs of their two teacher assistants.

“Our school doesn’t want to lose them,” she wrote. “Please put the budget higher, dad.”

Ugh. Ethics foul; in fact, three of them:

1. It is unethical for teachers to indoctrinate their students in political positions in which the teachers have a personal interest.

2. It is unethical to exploit children as lobbying tools, under the pretense of educating them.

3. It is extremely unethical to recruit a legislator’s 8-year-old daughter to carry a lobbying message. Continue reading →

Dan Savage’s Curse on Rick Santorum: Funny! But Wrong.

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

Former Senator Rick "Frothy Mix"

Rick Santorum, the former GOP senator and stalwart of social conservatives, recently announced his candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination in 2012. Santorum’s chances of becoming president are somewhere between Newt Gingrich’s White House prospects and an ice swan’s odds of being a centerpiece in Hell, but they aren’t helped any by the results of a devastating prank inflicted on his image by syndicated sex columnist Dan Savage.  When you Google “Santorum,” the first result listed is this:

Santorum 1. The frothy mix of lube and fecal matter that is sometimes the byproduct of anal sex. 2. Senator Rick Santorum. Continue reading →

The News Media’s Unethical Political Word Games

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

Reasonable people can disagree about the prudence and fairness of the various get-tough state and local laws targeting illegal immigrants, such as the recent law passed in Alabama (I like it, by the way). They can even disagree—though I personally don’t see how—about the wisdom of state-sanctioned incentives for illegals to smuggle their children into the country, like Maryland’s batty “Dream Act.”

What reasonable people should not accept and must not accept is the increasingly routine practice among many news outlets of dropping “illegal” from the phrase “illegal immigration” and “illegal immigrants” when discussing such measures. The practice is no less than a lie, an effort to misrepresent as bigotry legitimate objections to providing the benefits of American citizenship to those who willfully violate U.S. immigration laws and procedures. The papers, reporters, columnists and bloggers who do this inevitably follow the misrepresentation by denigrating anyone who doesn’t think scofflaws should be celebrated as heroes and handed the keys to the country as “nativists.”

I resent it, because my maternal grandparents were immigrants, the legal kind, and I would no more oppose the progress and success of law-abiding immigrants in the country than I would saw off my arm. I condemn it, because the tactic—and it is a tactic— is unethical journalism, an example of intentionally muddying an issue by imprecision so that the apathetic, the lazy or the none-too-bright—a sizable group, that—are confused about what is the real issue. Continue reading →

Chicago Flash Mobs, Political Correctness, and the Arrogant Press

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

What kind of people made up the mob? You don't want to know.

Chicago has been beset by several incidents of “flash mobs” that were of not the terpsichorean variety, but rather cell phone-organized marauders who struck suddenly, beating bystanders and robbing them. The Chicago media has adopted an odd policy in reporting the incidents: it has not reported the fact that the mobs were made up of African-American youths.

There is no excuse for this. It is manipulative, dishonest, and incompetent journalism, political correctness expanding into news censorship. It constitutes dishonest reporting, and a lack of respect for the public.  It is the ultimate in arrogance and abuse of their professional duties by people who have neither the credentials nor the right to decide what facts we are fit to know.

A Chicago Tribune writer named Mary Schmick attempted to justify her paper’s conduct, and was spectacularly unconvincing, writing in part… Continue reading →

The Strange, Unethical Saga of Junius Puke

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

Junius Puke

This week seems to mark the end of a perfect storm of ethical misconduct that almost drowned a young student in legal persecution for the non-crime of exercising his First Amendment rights. An insufferable and humorless bully with a professorship collided with an irresponsible prosecutor wielding an unconstitutional law, and it has taken eight years to undo the carnage.

A man named Junius Peake was an economics professor at the University of Northern Colorado,  who due to his parody-inviting name and undoubtedly also the character traits that he was soon to display so prominently, found himself being lampooned in a student satire blog called “The Howling Pig.”  The editor-in-chief of the blog was facetiously identified in the newsletter as the obviously fictional “Junius Puke,” who was portrayed with an outrageous photograph of Professor Peake altered to include sunglasses, a different nose,  a Hitler-esque mustache, and, on occasion, Kiss make-up and a Gene Simmons tongue.  Junius Puke, with tongue. “Junius Puke” wrote prose like this:

“This will be a regular bitch sheet that will speak truth to power, obscenities to clergy, and advice to all the stoners sitting around watching Scooby Doo. This will be a forum for the pissed off and disenfranchised in Northern Colorado, basically everybody. I made it to where I am through hard work, luck, and connections, all without a college degree. Dissatisfaction with a cushy do-nothing ornamental position led me to form this subversive little paper. I don’t normally care much about the question of daycare since my kids are grown and other people’s children give me the willies.” Continue reading →

Ethics Quote of the Day: Las Vegas Blackjack Dealer Lisa Weiss

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

“I discovered that Anthony is a bad man and a liar…I am a Democrat, I think he is a wonderful congressman and I hope this doesn’t hurt his career. I am still a big supporter of his, despite all of this.”

— Blackjack dealer and Rep. Anthony Weiner sexting partner Lisa Weiss, in an interview yesterday on Radar Online.

Americans who support leaders they think, or know, are bad men and liars misunderstand the core requirements for trustworthiness and leadership. This misunderstanding continues to allow corrupt individuals to wield power in our government, and the cost to all of us is beyond calculation.

Lisa Weiss is a “big supporter” of a national leader she has had only limited contact with, despite the fact that the contact led her to condemn his honesty and character. Until Lisa and the millions of Republicans and Democrats like her resolve to only tolerate and support honest and ethical leaders, the myriad of problems our nation faces will only multiply.