Ethics Quotes

Unethical Quote of the Week, Sequester Ethics Train Wreck Division: U.S. Dept. of Agriculture Officials

/ Jack Marshall / 19 Comments

“We have gone on record with a notification to Congress and whoever else that ‘APHIS would eliminate assistance to producers in 24 states in managing wildlife damage to the aquaculture industry, unless they provide funding to cover the costs.’ So it is our opinion that however you manage that reduction, you need to make sure you are not contradicting what we said the impact would be.”

—- U.S. Agriculture officials, responding to Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service official Charles Brown after he asked “if he could try to spread out the sequester cuts in his region to minimize the impact.” Brown quoted the response in an internal e-mail obtained by the Washington Times.

Why isn't the news media screaming?

Why isn’t the news media screaming?

Assuming that Brown’s account is accurate, the e-mail appears to show, in the interpretation most favorable to the Obama Administration, that at least one federal department believes that its job is to ensure that the across-the-board sequester cuts do as much tangible harm as possible, even where it is possible to mitigate that harm through effective management. The interpretation least favorable would conclude that President Obama has issued internal orders to the effect that any effort to lessen the cataclysmic results he and his Cabinet members predicted prior to the sequester deadline is forbidden, since it would undermine the political strategy of creating public anger against Republicans.

I don’t know where the truth lies. I can say that here in Washington, D.C., both Democrats and Republicans, without the benefit of the e-mail, seem to have adopted the worst case interpretation, which is shocking. Even more shocking is that the sick culture here is largely shrugging this off as “hardball politics” on behalf of the President and his Democratic allies. I cannot fathom this, just as I cannot fathom why all news media, left and right, are not screaming like the Donald Sutherland pod duplicate at the end of the remake of “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” if they also believe this is true. Continue reading →

Unethical Quote of the Week: “Anonymous”

/ Jack Marshall / 21 Comments

“In coordination with federal authorities, the LAPD is now conducting a massive manhunt for The Dark Knight Christopher Dorner, so that they may effectively silence him forever without due process. And now since the authorization of drones have been approved for the first time ever to pursue and execute an American citizen on United States Soil, the US Government will stage this event to set a new precedent from which it can assassinate American citizens for little to no reason at all. But do not misinterpret us for we do not condone the vicious acts that Dorner has allegedly partaken in. Instead we sympathize and resonate with his struggle. Dorner was not born a killer he was a law abiding citizen that was tainted by the corrupt and inhumane practices of the Los Angeles Police Department who serve only themselves. We however do not accept this fate, and call upon our brothers to raise arms against the LAPD, for justice and for the lulz (?) we will rise to disrupt, dismantle and dissect all aspects of the manhunt whilst revealing the LAPD’s unwarranted hypocrisy.”

—-the criminal computer hacking vigilante group Anonymous, in a statement of support for renegade cop-killer Chris Dorner, who, with any luck, will have been captured or shot dead by the time this is posted.

Dorner and Anonymous, a match made in Hell.

Dorner and Anonymous, a match made in Hell.

In case it somehow eludes you, this is only the Unethical Quote of the Week because Ethics Alarms has no “Incoherent Quote of the Week,” “Idiotic Quote of the Week,” or “Pompously Embarrassing Quote of the Week.”

Anonymous stands as a illuminating example of what happens when power, in the form of technological expertise, falls into the hands of child-like individuals completely devoid of ethics training, understanding, or analytical tools. Adept with a keyboard, their concepts of right and wrong are at the rudimentary level of higher primates in a jungle environment. Hence we get nonsense like …

  • “…the LAPD is now conducting a massive manhunt for The Dark Knight Christopher Dorner, so that they may effectively silence him forever without due process.” No, the LAPD is conducting a manhunt because Dorner is a mad-dog killer of innocent citizens, and has to be stopped before he kills again. This organization’s reasoning stops at cognitive dissonance: hate what it hates, and you are thereby virtuous and good, even if you’re a vicious killer.
  • Continue reading →

Unethical Quote of the Week: Former NASA Official Jon Harpold

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

“Don’t you think it would be better for them to have a happy successful flight and die unexpectedly during entry than to stay on orbit, knowing that there was nothing to be done until the air ran out?”

—–Space Shuttle Columbia mission operations chief Jon Harpold in 2003, talking about the Shuttle crew then in flight, as quoted by former NASA flight director Wayne Hale on his blog this week. Harpold was musing on a hypothetical situation (he thought) where NASA had determined that the Shuttle couldn’t safely return to Earth.

Columbia crew

Days before Columbia disintegrated on re-entry due to a damaged heat shield, NASA officials met to determine whether Columbia was safe to land despite some damage after takeoff. They decided, wrongly, as it turned out, that the Shuttle was safe. In the course of the meeting, Jon Harpold raised the hypothetical dilemma of a doomed Shuttle and an unaware crew.

Hale tells the story to make the point that NASA’s culture at the time was organizationally and ethically flawed. I agree.

Harpold’s position is kind but monstrous. It presumes to withhold the truth from those most effected by it, on the theory that it is better to die suddenly and unexpectedly than to have the opportunity to fight and strive to the end to solve what might be an impossible problem. Nobody should feel that he has the right to make that decision, to give up on life itself, for another who still has the capacity to think and act. This is disrespect for the values of personal liberty and autonomy, both much in the public mind today.

We each must have the right to make our own decisions about our fates, and must always have the information we need to make those decisions as wisely as we can. Those who fear the truth have insufficient reverence for it. Even the worst information may contain the seeds of victory.

I’m not going gentle into that good night, and damn anyone who tries to trick me into doing so out of misplaced kindness.

__________________________________

Facts: Kansas City Star

Graphic: KCNTV

Ethics Alarms attempts to give proper attribution and credit to all sources of facts, analysis and other assistance that go into its blog posts. If you are aware of one I missed, or believe your own work was used in any way without proper attribution, please contact me, Jack Marshall, at  jamproethics@verizon.net.

Unethical Quote of the Week: Ink Tank

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments

“27. No matter how bad your day is going, somewhere in the world a fat man just dropped his ice cream.”

—- The website Ink Tank, in the process of listing “60 of the world’s happiest facts.”

What???

dropped coneInk Tank’s list of “happiest facts” is a trivia-fest of cute, charming, or otherwise amusing factoids, some of dubious reliability ( 25. Rats giggle when you tickle them…), some of historic interest ( “7. On the day of his assassination, Martin Luther King Jr. had a pillow-fight in his motel room”), some with “Awwww!” value (“15. Otters hold hands when sleeping so they don’t drift away from each other”), some with really dubious reliability (“47. Cows produce the most milk when listening to the song “Everybody Hurts” by REM”), some that are older than Methuselah (“31. It takes seventeen muscles to smile and forty-three to frown”), some snarky (“30. The next Star Wars will not be directed by George Lucas.”), and some that are just plain stupid (“46. At the time of your birth, you were, for a few seconds, the youngest person on the planet”).  That’s all par for the course in these kinds of ubiquitous web lists.

#27., however, comes out of the blue like a drive-by shooting. What kind of person gets joy from the thought that somewhere in the world a stranger is suffering through one of life’s stinging tragedies, just as he is about to partake in one of life’s inimitable innocent pleasures? An ice cream cone! An iconic symbol of summer days, childhood, family excursions and fun! Taking the delicate, waffled cone in an eager hand, admiring the substance and swirl of the lovely confection, anticipating the bracing cold on the tongue and lips, the sweet creamy taste and then…plop!—all is ruined. I hate that! Who doesn’t hate that? When I worked for Baskin-Robins, we were told to always replace a fallen scoop of ice cream or a dropped cone gratis, whether the victim was 4 or 40. Since my ice cream shop days, I have bought replacement cones for other people’s children, because that stricken face of shock, hurt and disappointment the second the scoop hits the ground will haunt my nightmares if I don’t. Continue reading →

Ethics Quote of the Day: Blogger Jeff Dunetz

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

“One thing the POTUS missed…there is no executive order preventing the Federal Government from selling weapons to Mexican Drug Cartels…everyone would support that one.”

—- Jeff Dunetz on his blog “The Lid,” criticizing President Obama’s list of 23 Executive Orders as “a pile of nothing.”

Obama And Biden Unveil Proposal To Decrease Gun Violence In U.S.There was a lot to dislike about today’s cynical exercise by President Obama on the topic of gun control. I already mentioned, in a post yesterday, its offensive exploitation of young children as props. James Taranto visited that issue today in his “Best of the Web,” pointing out the hypocrisy of White House spokesman Jay Carney going into high dudgeon and attacking the NRA for alluding, in a recent advocacy ad, to the fact that the President sends his own children to a private school that employs armed guards, and that his daughters are the beneficiaries of armed protection from the Secret Service. Said Carney:

“Most Americans agree that a president’s children should not be used as pawns in a political fight. But to go so far as to make the safety of the President’s children the subject of an attack ad is repugnant and cowardly.”

Taranto, who does not agree with NRA’s reasoning in the ad, writes of today’s White House performance,

“If the president wants his critics to refrain from even indirectly referring to his daughters, he ought to stop exploiting ordinary people’s children in this manner. Even if the NRA missed the mark in accusing him of elitist hypocrisy over school guards, his display today makes him a fair target for such a charge.”

Yup. Continue reading →

Ethics Quote of the Month: Jodie Foster

/ Jack Marshall / 21 Comments

Jodie foster

Why is Jodie Foster’s stream of consciousness speech as she accepted the Golden Globe’s lifetime achievement honor, the Cecil B. DeMille Award, worthy of praise for its ethical values?

  • It was genuine, open and honest. Celebrities are paid to live their lives in public, and all of them struggle to find the proper, fair, and sane balance between what they are obligated to show the world, and what they keep secure in their private lives. Nobody has struggled with this balance more than Foster, or suffered moire because of it. A performer since she was a toddler, she never really had a choice to live a normal life. Her speech was a gift to the public revealing inner thoughts and emotions about someone it cares about but has never known as well as it would like to. Continue reading →

The Fourth Annual Ethics Alarms Awards: The Best of Ethics 2012

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

nonpartisan

One of the reasons there are always more negative stories than positive ones on Ethics Alarms is that ethical conduct is still much more common than unethical conduct, and thus has to be more spectacular to be worthy of comment. At least, that’s my rationalization this year….

Here are the 2011 Ethics Alarms Awards for the Best in Ethics:

Most Important Ethical Act of the Year:

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie’s public display of appreciation to President Obama for the rapid Federal response to Super Storm Sandy. Naturally, Christie was subsequently called a turncoat and blamed for Mitt Romney’s loss.

Outstanding Ethical Leadership

Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts. Roberts’ decision to confound conventional wisdom and to vote to uphold the constitutionality of  the Affordable Care Act, a.k.a. Obamacare, reaffirmed the ideological independence of the Court while giving due deference to the will of Congress. Roberts was derided by Republicans and conservatives, while liberals and Democrats patted themselves on the back, presuming that they had intimidated him into rejecting the so-called conservative wing of the Court by their (irresponsible, dishonest and unethical) accusations that the Court put politics ahead of law and justice. Roberts, in truth, just interpreted the law, which is what his duty required.

Heroes of the Year

Seniors at Lexington (Ky) Catholic High School. When a gay couple was told by school administrators that they were not welcome at their senior prom, a significant number of their classmates moved the prom to the parking lot, where a good time was had by all. Courage, respect, fairness and kindness. These seniors are ready for the real world, which needs them more than they need it. Continue reading →

Unethical Quote of the Week: MLB Players Union Chief Michael Weiner

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

“Today’s news that those members of the BBWAA afforded the privilege of casting ballots failed to elect even a single player to the Hall of Fame is unfortunate, if not sad….To ignore the historic accomplishments of Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens, for example, is hard to justify. Moreover, to penalize players exonerated in legal proceedings — and others never even implicated — is simply unfair.”

—-Major League Baseball players union executive Michael Weiner, in a formal statement released after the news that the Baseball Writers Association of American had denied Hall of Fame admission this year to all-time home run leader Barry Bonds, pitching ace Roger Clemens, and several other players who have either admitted to steroid use or are strongly suspected of being users. No player was on the requisite number of ballots this year.

It takes a Harvard lawyer to be that unethical in so few words.

It takes a Harvard lawyer to be that unethical in so few words.

It’s not easy to pack so much bad ethics into one statement, but we should not be surprised that the baseball players’ union chief was up to the task. The union shares responsibility with baseball’s “see-n0-evil” management during the steroid era and the willful blindness of the sportswriting community for allowing steroids and other performance enhancing drugs to permanently scar the game’s integrity and distort its records beyond repair. Small wonder Weiner is eager to rationalize his organization’s complicity with an absurd, deceptive and corrupting assertion that none of it should make any difference:

  • The writers did not “ignore” Bonds’ accomplishments. To the contrary, his “accomplishment” of blatantly abusing steroids, launching a late career surge of power and prowess that was alien to the career arc of every other player who ever set foot on a field as he morphed into baseball’s version of the Hulk, all while lying his head off and convincing other players that drug-assisted cheating was the accepted way to achieve fame and fortune, was exactly why he was on less than 40% of the ballots ( 75% is required for enshrinement.) Continue reading →

The Fourth Annual Ethics Alarms Awards: The Worst of Ethics 2012 (Part 1)

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

Trayvon

Welcome to the Fourth  Annual Ethics Alarms Awards

Recognizing the Best and Worst of Ethics in 2012!

This is the first installment of the Worst. (Part 2 is here, the Best is here.)

2012 inspired over 1000 posts, and Ethics Alarms still missed a lot. And the last week of 2012 was sufficiently ethics packed that the Awards are late this year. My apologies.

In a depressingly unethical year, these were the low points:

Ethics Train Wreck of the Year

Was there ever any doubt? The Trayvon Martin- George Zimmerman fiasco, naturally, which is far from over. This year’s winner may be the worst ethics train wreck since Monica and Bill were dominating the news.  So far it has involved dubious, unprofessional or clearly unethical conduct by, among others, Martin’s parents, their lawyer, Zimmerman, his wife, the police, Zimmerman’s first set of lawyers, the prosecutor, the Congressional Black Caucus, NBC (which repeatedly broadcast an “accidentally” truncated tape of Zimmerman’s 911 call that made him sound racist), the rest of the broadcast media, conservative talk radio and bloggers (who decided their contribution would be to try to show that Martin deserved to be shot), Spike Lee, Rosie O’Donnell, the New Black Panthers, and President Obama, who ratcheted up the hate being focused on Zimmerman by implying that the killing as racially motivated, and by connecting himself to the victim. Runner-up: The 2012 Presidential campaign.

“Incompetent Elected Officials of the Year” Division Continue reading →

Unethical Quote of the Week: Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Cal.)

/ Jack Marshall / 43 Comments

“It’s an accurate historical record of who the Democratic women of Congress are. It also is an accurate record that it was freezing cold and our members had been waiting a long time for everyone to arrive and that they had to get back into the building to greet constituents, family members, to get ready to go to the floor.”

—- House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, lamely and absurdly defending  her posting of a digitally altered photograph of female Democrats in the House, which added several members who were unable to attend to shoot to the members actually in attendance.

Except for the fact that a digitally-altered photo is not an accurate historical record and she knows it, Pelosi’s statement is completely reasonable and honest. The Washington Post published the unaltered photo.

A digitally altered photograph that misrepresents an event by inserting individuals who were not present is ethically indistinguishable from the old Soviet Union practice of excising the images of purged officials from official photographs. It is a lie. It represents an effort to alter history, and mislead viewers of the historical record. Which is more disturbing: that a high-ranking U.S. government official blandly endorses this deceptive practice with connections to totalitarian propaganda, or that Nancy Pelosi calls a doctored photo an accurate historical record?

She is and has ever been an ethically-deficient disgrace to her district, her state and Congress.

[And as an aside, I believe that a gender-segregated photo of female legislators is sexist, prejudicial and hypocritical. Every one of these women would scream if, for example, Republican House members posed for a photo excluding the women in their number.]

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Facts: Washington Post