Citizenship

Announcing: The Incompetent Elected Official of the Month

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

"What, me legislate?"

With this post, Ethics Alarms announces a new continuing category for ethics infamy: Incompetent Elected Officials.

We tend to focus on corruption, dishonesty, conflicts of interest and lies when identifying unethical public officials, but it is the wildly incompetent of the breed who might carry the most ethics baggage of all. An incompetent elected official not only is irresponsible for taking on leadership that he or she is unable to deliver due to a lack of brains, skill, experience or judgment, but also keeps a more deserving and able individual from a distinguished position that needs him, jeopardizes the public, and undermines trust in the government generally. The public’s ethics are also implicated by the incompetent official’s ascension to power, as the truly inept can usually be identified with a modicum of diligence and care. Incompetent and irresponsible officials require the assistance of incompetent and irresponsible voters.

Thus incompetent elected officials warrant special attention. And the first incompetent elected official to be honored as the Ethics Alarms Incompetent Elected Official of the Month is….Alabama Republican State Senator Gerald Allen! Continue reading →

The War On Gays: “Fair and Equitable” in Corpus Christi

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

Some day, one hopes not too far in the future, when U.S. culture has unequivocally abandoned the ancient fear of gay human beings, when understanding, fairness and respect has banished ignorance and hate, when same sex marriages are recognized as manifestations of loyalty, commitment and love rather than perversions of nature, and when no American feels the need to hide his or her sexuality, and thus feels no compulsion to trumpet it either, we will look back on such societal embarrassments as the Flour Bluff Intermediate School District as we do now on past purveyors of child labor, forced sterilization, involuntary human experimentation, mistreatment of women, and racism, and wonder, “What was the matter with those people? How did they get that way?”

Or, come to think of it, we could ask that question right now.

Seventeen-year-old Bianca “Nikki” Peet, a senior at Flour Bluffs High School in Corpus Christi, Texas, high school senior requested the she be permitted to launch a Gay-Straight Alliance in her school. The Equal Access Act, a federal law passed in 1984, requires schools receiving federal funding to offer “fair opportunities for students to form student-led  groups, regardless of their religious, political and philosophical leanings.” If the school district was going to allow any extracurricular groups, it had to allow Nikki’s.

So it shut down all extracurricular clubs at the school. Continue reading →

The Ethics of Singing For Muammar

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

Sing, Nelly---and charge him through the nose.

Singer Nelly Furtado has been attacked recently for accepting a million dollars in 2007 to entertain Muammar Gaddafi and his family. The idea seems to be that, as ringingly put by screenwriter Mark Tapper,

“It is quite simply willful blindness to claim that there is no moral dimension in the choice to perform privately for a monster like Gaddafi, and in being paid exorbitantly from funds no doubt stolen from his own people, or misappropriated from foreign aid or dirty deals.”

Furtado isn’t the only one who crooned for the Libyan dictator, apparently. Mariah Carey, Usher, Lionel Richie, Beyoncé and other performers also accepted big bucks to give Muammar and his family a good time.Furtado is donating her fee to charity in the wake of criticism like Tapper’s and Beyoncé has also donated the million that she received to charity, apologizing profusely. Mariah Carey is begging for forgiveness.

I’m glad that the stars are giving their money to worthy causes, and no doubt it is a good public relations move in a society where half-baked ethical notions become conventional wisdom before much thought has been applied to them. Nevertheless, Furtado and the rest did nothing wrong by entertaining Gaddafi. Continue reading →

Unethical Gall in Norfolk: The Case of the Shameless Freeloader

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

"Freddy the Freeloader": Role Model

Jill McGlone was working for the Norfolk (Virginia) Community Services Board (known as CSB—an independent agency created by the state and funded with state and federal tax dollars) as an office assistant when she was involved in an internal personnel investigation.
McGlone was put on paid leave, but her case remained in limbo, without resolution. She stayed home, and continued to collect her full $29,000/year salary and benefits—for twelve years. Continue reading →

Frank Buckles, Speaker Boehner, and the Duty To Remember

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

Frank Buckles is our last chance to remember...

They fought overseas in battles with strange names like the Meuse-Argonne Offensive. They sang charmingly upbeat songs like “Over There!” and “Inky-Dinky Parley-Voo.” A lot of them were gassed, about 200,000 were wounded, 120,000 died, and many of them who  came home were never the same, dubbed “the lost generation” by Ernest Hemingway. They were America’s “doughboys,” the young homegrown heroes of World War I, who arrived late to a pointless war they didn’t start, and became the first American soldiers to die in large numbers in foreign lands.

The last of them died last week. His name was Frank Buckles, and he had lied about his age to become a soldier at the tender age of 16. In his 110 years, Buckles took part in a lot of history, sailing for the Continent on the Carpathia, the very same ship that rescued the Titanic’s survivors; traveling the world by sea as ship’s purser, which afforded him an accidental encounter with Adolf Hitler, and having the bad luck to be in the Philippines when the Japanese invaded, ending up as a prisoner for most of World War II.

Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.), and Rep. Shelley Moore Capito, (R-W.Va.) have introduced resolutions to allow fellow West Virginian Buckles to lie in honor in the Rotunda of the U.S. Capitol, where the public could pay their respects to him by filing past his casket. Though usually reserved for former presidents and distinguished members of Congress, unelected American citizens of distinction have laid in state in the Rotunda, such as civil rights icon Rosa Parks and Gen. Douglas MacArthur.

Apparently Speaker of the House John Boehner doesn’t think Buckles makes the grade, for he has rejected the idea and decreed that the last World War I soldier in a special ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery, but not at the Capitol. Continue reading →

The Comment of the Day: Another On “The White Male Scholarship”

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

John-Baptiste Clamence reacts to yesterday’s post with a crucial point (that I happen to agree with) about the role of law in setting cultural values and societal ethics. Here is his Comment of the Day, on “The White Male Scholarship”:

“It’s a hard line to draw sometimes; the line between your right to have the wrong opinion, and how much the law should push you to have the right opinion.
In the UK, since 1996 it has been illegal for B&Bs to refuse rooms to gay couples. These are private businesses – should they have the right to offer their services in a discriminatory way also?

“The situation you describe is, in my view, unethical for the reason that it perpetuates the idea in society that racial discrimination for an academic award is OK. The sooner and stronger the message given by the law is, then the sooner the views of society change.

“To paraphrase Cesar Millan: Change the behaviour, change the thoughts.”

Unethical Quote of the Week: U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

Trick Question: Who are the U.S. Attorney General's people?

“When you compare what people endured in the South in the 60s to try to get the right to vote for African-Americans, and to compare what people were subjected to there to what happened in Philadelphia–which was inappropriate, certainly that—to describe it in those terms I think does a great disservice to people who put their lives on the line, who risked all, for my people.”

—-U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, testifying in a Congressional hearing regarding allegations of race-based enforcement in the Justice Department, and taking issue with Rep. John Culberson, who was questioning Holder about the New Black Panther Party voter-intimidation case. Culberson quoted a Democratic activist who called the incident the most serious act of voter intimidation he had witnessed in his career, prompting Holder’s statement.

I am willing to give the Attorney General the benefit of the doubt and regard this is a slip of the tongue. It would be unfair to conclude, based on this statement, that Holder is biased. But his use of the term “my people” certainly raises the question of bias. As the Attorney General of the United States, Eric Holder is obligated to regard all American citizens as “his people.” Suggesting otherwise undermines his credibility and the people’s trust, and is at best careless, and at worst suspicious.

[Thanks to WSJ blogger James Taranto for flagging the quote.]

The White Male Scholarship

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

Does he really need a scholarship?

Colby Bohannan, president of the Former Majority Association for Equality, has set up a scholarship program for white males. To qualify, you have to be at least a 25 percent Caucasian, have demonstrated a commitment to education, achieved at least a 3.0 grade average, show financial need, and document a positive contribution to the community. Bohannan’s official reasoning is that white males are the only group that doesn’t have a scholarship dedicated to them. He is, he says, righting an injustice. Continue reading →

Ethics Heroes: The U.S. Supreme Court

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

As the perfect tonic for all the attempts to silence Gilbert and Sullivan songs with controversial lyrics, reject bus ads espousing controversial positions, and declare that words like “target” are just too darn inflammatory for the sensitive, politically-correct ears of CNN viewers, here comes the U.S. Supreme Court, galloping to the rescue with a near unanimous (8-1), ringing reaffirmation that free speech is a bastion of American democracy, even when the speaker or speakers are vicious, unfair, cruel, radical and deluded. Continue reading →

Ethics Dunce: Texas State Rep. Debbie Riddle

/ Jack Marshall / 34 Comments

 

Look up "Ethics Dunce" in my dictionary, and this picture is under it.

The “Ethics Dunce” designation was invented for people like Texas Republican state Rep. Debbie Riddle.

 

She has proposed one of the many anti-illegal immigration bills currently being considered in the Texas state legislature. Her brainchild, and I use that term generously, is House Bill 2012. Man, it’s tough! It  would punish those who  “intentionally, knowingly, or recklessly” hire unauthorized immigrants with penalties up to two years in jail and fines of up to $10,000.

Riddle does have what she considers a reasonable exception, however. She believes it is dastardly to hire illegals, rewarding their disregard of our immigration procedures and willful violation of our laws, and creating an incentive for others to do the same…unless they are hiring a maid, a lawn caretaker or another houseworker! Continue reading →