Ethics Alarms Award Nominee

The Ugly Truth About The Teaching Profession: Orlando Public Schools Division

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

Whiplash

Magnify this news report about public school teachers disciplined in the Orlando area, what, 10,000? 100,000? times, and the complete untrustworthiness of the U.S. teaching profession should come into sharp focus.

Highlights…

  • The teaching certificate of Jeanne Michaud, who taught math at Longwood’s Lyman High was permanently revoked in a settlement agreement approved last month by the Education Practices Commission, quasi-judicial group that levies penalties against educator’s certificates.

Michaud showed students a crude wooden carving of a penis and testicles. Michaud also kept an umbrella that students “regularly used to strike each other with,” according to the evidence. She spread gossip about teachers and administrators in class, denigrating them in front of students.

  •  Gregory Alan Sims, a former science teacher at Lake Brantley High in Altamonte Springs, was accused of putting tape on a girl’s mouth and taping her belongings to a pole. Sims claimed that he only mimicked putting tape on the girl’s mouth. Sims’ settlement agreement calls for two years of probation and completion of a classroom management course if he returns to teaching. He also was fined $750.

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Should President Obama Attend Scalia’s Funeral? Of Course.

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

NICK SCHNELLE/JOURNAL STAR Pastor Larry Zurek leads a funeral mass for former Peoria Fire Cheief Ernie Russell on Friday morning at Sacred Heart Catholic Church. Russell was 74.

President Obama, we learned from Josh Earnest, won’t be honoring the late Justice Antonin Scalia by attending his funeral, and the Presidential spokesman couldn’t even say what weekend activity Obama deems more important. Already, conservative commentators and pundits are calling the odd decision an intentional snub, and many on the left are also obviously puzzled, causing them to make up excuses, like suggesting that the Scalia family told the President of the United States to stay away.

It’s not a snub, of course. It’s just a willfully lost opportunity to show some non-partisan class and leadership, or in other words, Obama being Obama. We’ve seen this kind of irrational, arrogant, toxic conduct from him before, as when he was the only world leader who wouldn’t deign to join with other heads of state in the mass support of France following the Charlie Hebdo terrorist attacks. This is Obama’s “It’s my Presidency and I’ll be a jerk if I want to” streak, unattractive, petty, and a major reason why the United States is as culturally, politically and societally fractured as it is.  Continue reading →

Kanye West, Ethics Corrupter

/ Jack Marshall / 41 Comments

FevaTV-KanyeWest Time Kanye West, a major and influential figure in pop music and with young black African-Americans particularly, has been a constant force for racial division, most notably when he told a live national audience that the response to the New Orleans recovery after Katrina was deliberately slow in order to harm African Americans. Despite the fact that he has repeatedly revealed himself to be a shameless jerk as well—really, it’s inconceivable that someone of such taste and class as Kim Kardashian would marry someone like that, but who can map the human heart?—West continues to promote racial distrust and division, making the musician a cultural and societal pollutant, the human national equivalent of Flint water.

His latest racist outburst was a series of tweets yesterday to his millions of followers that proceeded this way, within a minute…

To Pitchfork, Rolling Stone, New York Times, and any other white publication. Please do not comment on black music anymore…

I love love love white people but you don’t understand what it means to be the great grandson of ex slaves and make it this far…

The system is designed for colored people to fail and one of our only voices is music. One of our only ways out is music.

Hilariously, West’s complaint was that a Pitchfork review “only” gave his album a “9 out of 10” rating. He explained that he deserved a “30 out of 10.”

The racists.

This is more evidence that strong, vocal and influential forces in pop culture and the black community have abandoned the goals of racial respect, integrated society and equal justice and opportunity for the new goals black separation, special status, double standards, and disrespect. This has been the message of protesting activists on dozens of campuses; it was the message of the Black Lives Matter/Black Panthers salute Americans were subjected to by Beyoncé at the Super Bowl halftime show, and that is West’s irresponsible message as well.

Kanje has decreed some new rules, apparently : Continue reading →

Unethical Tweet Of The Month: New York Times Journalist Brent Staples

/ Jack Marshall / 27 Comments

Staples

Brent Staples, who I'm sure is certain I am criticizing him because he is black...

Brent Staples, who I’m sure is certain I am criticizing him because he is black…

I view this as tragic, in so many ways. Brent Staples himself is apparently the victim of the cultural poison he is peddling, that every failure, misfortune or criticism of an African American must be presumptively rooted in racial animus rather than the shortcomings or fault of the black citizen involved. Others who use this strategy of race-baiting as a political weapon are not as sincere as Staples—he writes this kind of thing in editorial columns all the time—but they have joined with him to do terrible damage to race relations, all in defense of a President whose incompetence is too painful for his supporters to accept.

I realized that this would be an unethical political weapon Democrats could not resist using back in 2008, when Obama was running against John McCain. I warned against it then. The Democrats were arguing that Obama was so clearly the only choice for voters that he could only be defeated by racism, for only racists would oppose him. I wrote..

This strategy would be unethical even if the Democrats weren’t the party nominating an eloquent abstraction with less governing experience than any Chief Executive within memory. It is insanely irresponsible when used to back a candidate about whom there are many legitimate doubts, mysteries and questions. Both parties deserve respect; both candidates deserve respect. And the democratic system deserves the most respect of all.  

But is the Democratic message wrong if party decision-makers and faithful really believe it? Yes, because the belief is unsupported by hard, persuasive, un-slanted facts, and that makes it irresponsible and unfair…A belief alone is not enough to justify claiming victory for an untested leader with plenty of holes in his resume. Belief alone is not sufficient justification to lay the groundwork for race-baiting in the wake of an electoral loss in November.  

I’m a rational, informed voter who does his research and knows the issues, and I may choose not to vote for Barack Obama for any number of legitimate reasons—including the offensive attitude of his party—that have nothing whatsoever to do with his race. How dare the Democratic Party, Obama, or anyone shout to the media that my vote is motivated by racism? This is playing with societal dynamite. 

The Democratic message that the election is a slam dunk for Obama if America can only avoid bigotry and election fraud is a recipe for civil unrest, racial tension, and the unraveling of public faith in our institutions. It is reckless and offensive, and, take note, Democrats, idiotic.

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Ethical Quote Of The Month: Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

Antonin_Scalia_2010

“I have no illusions that your man will nominate someone who shares my orientation, but I hope he sends us someone smart. Let me put a finer point on it. I hope he sends us Elena Kagan.”

—The recently departed Antonin Scalia, speaking to Obama advisor David Axelrod seven years ago, as President Obama was faced with making his first Supreme Court nomination upon the retirement  of Justice Souter.

Kagan, of course, was finally chosen to fill the second SCOTUS vacancy. Axelrod treats this conversation as somehow shocking, which I guess it would be to a political operative like him, to whom partisan warfare is everything,. Yet Scalia, who was known to be good friends with several of the more liberal members of the court, including Kagan, displayed with that private statement to Axelrod the professional attitude I have heard from many lawyers, and that perfectly describes my own. What is important to have on the Supreme Court are the best and most competent legal minds available. Assuming such judges also possess integrity, the third branch of the government will be in good hands. Continue reading →

Comment of the Day: “Unethical High School Assembly Video Of…What? The Month? The Year? Eternity?”

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

race

I must admit: I thought the “unequal opportunity race” video that was the subject of my post to be so outrageously simplistic, exaggerated, insulting to white Americans and discouraging to minority Americans that nobody would defend it. The lively debate that the post sparked proved that the white privilege deflection has seeped into mainstream thinking far more than I had previously understood, and that the position the progressive movement wants to communicate to African Americans is that absent aggressive, government-executed hobbling of present day white citizens as they pursue their own ambitions and dreams, and opportunities for their children, black Americans are doomed to comparative failure, cursed to be victims of traps, gaping craters and metaphorical sharks.

Late in the debate, commenter Chris Bentley, himself an African American, provided a different perspective in two long posts. I am combining them as his Comment of the Day, on the post ,Unethical High School Assembly Video Of…What? The Month? The Year? Eternity?.

To which I say b.s. (as a black man). I have no doubt, no doubt whatsoever, that I have succeeded (and failed at times) solely based on my merit, talents, and desire. I have not been unemployed for even a second, since the age of 18 (I am 37). I have applied to many, many jobs that I have desired, and been hired for many of those jobs. I have been accepted and attended 8 (8!) different colleges, earning 3 different degrees. I have spent the last 20 years working in education, from ECE to college, and spent 3 years as a preschool director (a black male preschool director is about as rare as a unicorn that poops gold).

None of this is meant to be taken as bragging, as my story is no more successful than anyone else on this blog. Nor am I more successful then any average black man, who grew up with loving, educated parents, who forced me to have a good head on my shoulders, taught me the importance of education, and did not teach me to be distrustful of whites, or to blame shift my failures elsewhere. I find it patronizing to be told that individual merit is not enough for me to succeed, when compared to whites; that if I truly want to compete on an even playing field, I need those same whites to level the field.

No. I. Don’t.

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Rep. Alan Grayson, Incivility, Predicting Unethical Conduct…and Donald Trump

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

Grayson

It should come as no surprise to anyone that Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fl.) is under investigation by the House Ethics Committee for serious ethics violations. This was pre-ordained by the proclivities he has shown throughout his political career. In his case, the primary tell is his complete lack of civility, which is symptomatic of a crucial respect deficit. Those who do not regard displaying respect for colleagues, fellow citizens, political adversaries and, more broadly, societal standards of fairness and decency as an important behavioral mandate cannot be trusted to respect any other ethical values either. Occasionally one will find someone who deals in insults and personal denigration who is otherwise ethical, just as one will occasionally encounter a baby goat with two heads, but it is rare indeed. If you go through life avoiding uncivil, verbally abusive people like the plague (indeed, such people carry the plague of de-civilization) you will not miss out on very many good companions, and you will spare yourself a lot of misery as well the danger of personal corruption.

Grayson is without question the most uncivil, rudest, least professional member of Congress. I was amused to find that I had mentioned him in a post from 2010 about how many ethics scandals were predictable, given the past conduct of their principle actors. Once Tom DeLay was out of Congress, Alan Grayson was easily the most likely candidate for a scandal, because the man has no ethics alarms. In my very first post about Grayson, I wrote (in 2009),

“Grayson is the Congressman whose explanation of the GOP position on health care was that “they want you to die.” He said that Dick Cheney speaks with “blood dripping from his teeth.” His mode of debate and persuasion, in other words, is insult and hyperbole. Respect for opposing views: zilch. Civility grade: F… He has endorsed unethical rules and plays by them…”

That post was about Grayson trying to get the Justice Department to shut down a website that mocked him. Yes, he doesn’t believe in freedom of speech, either, when he is the target of insults rather than the generator of them.

All of which led me to react with a smile and a yawn when it was revealed that the disgusting congressman, now running for the U.S. Senate–Sure! Why not?—has been secretly moonlighting as a hedge fund manager. It sounds like a Saturday Night Live skit: “By day, a Wall Street-bashing, 1% hating, populist Democratic Congressman! By night, a wheeling and dealing hedge-fund manager!”

Do I need to explain why this is a slam-dunk conflict of interest with the appearance of impropriety? I don’t think so. It also smells of insider trading and using information privy to elected officials for personal gain. On the other side, he used his position as a U.S. House of Representatives member to attract clients.

From the New York Times (it’s me breaking in a couple of  times): Continue reading →

Jenrry Mejia, The Inexplicable Ethics Mega-Dunce

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

mejia

What is the explanation for this?

Jenrry Mejia is a young New York Mets relief pitcher who until recently had a bright future as a star closer and a guaranteed multi-millionaire.  Now, entirely on his own initiative, he has become the first player ever banned from baseball for using steroids .

This is not easy, though Mejia did it with ease…and speed.  After recovering from Tommy John surgery, Mejia was establishing himself as the Mets closer by the end of the 2014 season. But he began the 2015 season with an 80-game suspension for testing positive for a common PED (Performance Enhancing Drug), then, even before completing that punishment,  flunked another urine test and earned himself a 162-game suspension a few months later.

Knowing full well that a third positive test would end his career, Mejia tried a different banned steroid, was caught again, and that third strike triggered a lifetime expulsion from major league baseball under the sport’s rules. Nobody has been that reckless and stupid, not even Manny Ramirez (who was caught twice), and Manny’s picture is in the dictionary under “reckless and stupid.” Continue reading →

Ethics Quote Of The Month: “Bridge of Spies”

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

bridge-of-spies-656

The shooting script for the Academy Award nominated film “Bridge of Spies” is now online. Written by Matt Charman and the Coen brothers, it, like the film that Steven Spielberg made out of it, provides an unusually accurate and nuanced portrayal of ethical lawyering. The movie is worth seeing, better more than once, and I expect that I will use many issues raised in it for class discussion as I teach legal ethics to lawyers this year.

There is one howlingly wrong scene, in which the lawyer, Jim Donovan (played by Tom Hanks) has a private discussion with the judge who will be sentencing his client, a convicted Russian spy. Donovan argues against a death sentence. If this happened, and I doubt it, it would have been an egregious ethics breach: this is called ex parte contact, and is strictly forbidden.

The film redeems this misstep many times over, especially in a scene that neatly explores both the duty of confidentiality and the duty of loyalty, as well as the crucial role of rules in society, and why “the ends justify the means” as well as those who advocate that philosophy must be rejected. “Ethics Bob” Stone told me that he now uses the scene in his business ethics classes.

The scene begins with Donovan meeting in a restaurant with a man who has been following him…. Continue reading →

Comment of the Day (1): “Ethics Observations On Beyonce’s Super Bowl 50 Halftime Performance”

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

Civil-Rts-March-womwn

Late last night produced not one but two clear-cut Comments of the Day. This is the first; another will be along any minute now.

Responding to the post about Beyonce’s use of the Super Bowl halftime show to glamorize black liberation politics, Isaac argued that while the violent and loud radicals and revolutionaries get all the headlines, it is the quiet, law abiding, dedicated “squares”—haven’t heard that word for a long time!—that get the job done. This is essentially the opposite of Clarence Darrow’s conviction that it is the law-breaking revolutionaries who cut through the Gordian Knot of the unacceptable status quo. The man he extolled in a speech making that case was murderer and terrorist John Brown—who would have loved the Black Panthers. [I was just now trying to give you a link to Darrow’s amazing speech about Brown, and can’t find one. Shame on you, Internet! It’s in my book, though…you can get a used one for less than 3 bucks…]

Here is Isaac’s Comment of the Day on the post, Ethics Observations On Beyonce’s Super Bowl 50 Halftime Performance:

The bogus assumption often made is that the hippy/counterculture movement somehow brought about civil rights, since those two things happened at roughly the same time. This is wrong and those people should feel bad. It was decades of hard work by a whole lot of “squares” and a lot of stoically religious people, and the type of nonviolent and extremely effective form of resistance and racial healing preached by Dr. King that got the job done, at great personal cost. The stoner crowd and the violent, revolutionary factions like the Black Panthers were almost entirely counterproductive, but a lot sexier. So they are the ones romanticized today. Beyonce isn’t going to do a nostalgic dance number with Black women dressed as Baptists in flowery hats.

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