Finance

Incompetent Elected Official Of The Month: Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La)

/ Jack Marshall / 39 Comments
The Senator thinks its running backwards!

The Senator thinks it’s running backwards!

On the Shreveport Time website, Andre Dean Benton reports…

“I attended the Bossier City VFW Post 5951 discussion of Veterans’ issues with Senator Mary Landrieu last week at 1315 North Gate Road, where she responded to a wide range of issues facing our American veterans from her talking points as well as from questions fielded from the audience. An older veteran stood up toward the middle of the meeting and expressed to her his deep sadness and concern with the massive and constantly growing American debt ($16.9 trillion today and $5.6 trillion in 2000) and the crippling cost to taxpayers to pay for the staggering interest on that debt….

I was stunned to then hear my Louisiana senator defend the massive U.S. debt saying: “That is not true, sir! We do not have an increasing national debt! For the past six to seven years we have been continuously driving that debt down and reducing it and it is NOT increasing.” She then went on to explain the federal costs of Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security as “non-negotiable mandates by law that cannot be changed” and explained that only a small portion of the federal budget was in discretionary spending, where she was working with others in the Senate to further reduce our nation’s debt….

“No one on her staff corrected her or offered a polite “update” for the audience, and the elderly gentleman speaking the question was a little rattled by her vigorous contradiction of his stated facts that he just mumbled something across the table from me about “Congress constantly raising the debt ceiling …” and then was respectfully silent. As he was asking and our senator was responding, I was Googling the US Treasury’s official home page on my iPhone and staring at the government published facts on the history and facts about the U.S. debt: Continue reading →

Unethical Quote of the Week: Economist Paul Krugman

/ Jack Marshall / 30 Comments

“…The prostitute thing is embarrassing and painful to think about, but not a disqualification for public office. David Vitter is still in the Senate, and in internal LA Republican politics is apparently squashing the very pious Bobby Jindal like a bug…I know that opinions differ about just how effective Spitzer’s confrontations were. But at least he tried — which is more than you can say about almost anyone else in our political life. Basically, the malefactors of great leverage were bailed out and went right back to being bad guys again, and everyone in public life pretended that nothing had happened. That, I think, is why there’s a surprising reservoir of support for Spitzer; people remember him as someone who showed at least some of the righteous outrage that has been so wrongly absent from our national discourse. It’s a useful reminder, and it’s why I regard his entry into the race, win or lose, as a good thing.”

–— Inexplicably revered progressive economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, discussing the re-entry of Eliot Spitzer into New York state politics on his blog. Spitzer, despite having to resign from office as governor because he was caught partaking in the services of a prostitution ring—the same kind of enterprise he aggressively prosecuted as state attorney general, is now running for comptroller.

Explain, please: How can anyone rely on the judgment of someone whose ethical reasoning is this miserable?

Explain, please: How can anyone rely on the judgment of someone whose ethical reasoning is this miserable?

I do not understand how anyone can read or take seriously Krugman’s opinions on budget management and national affairs—he thinks that the national debt is no big deal at the moment, a position that is essential to Obama-enabling—when the favorite economist of progressives and Democrats can write something as indicting as the quote above. The post is appallingly irrational, irresponsible and unethical: it suggests that the author’s judgment is miserable, that his ethics are negligible, that his biases rule his intellect….and that, apparently with justification, he is confident that the Park Avenue liberals who quote him at dinner parties won’t lose an ounce of respect for or abandon an inch of reliance regarding a champion who believes such rot. Continue reading →

Out Of A State Lottery, A Golden Rule Moment

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments
We're NOT going to be selfish and exclusive, even though we can and you expect us to!

“We’re NOT going to be selfish and exclusive, even though we can and you expect us to!”

It never seems to work out this way, and thus it is interesting to speculate why the office lottery pool at Keller Williams Partner Realty in Plantation, Florida treated a dilemma so differently, and so much more ethically, than the key participants here, or here.

Jennifer Maldonado had only been working as an administrative assistant at the company for two weeks, and because she hadn’t received her first pay check, she decided not to join the office Powerball pool when she was approached. The organizer even offered to loan her the money: nope, insisted Maldonado. Not this time; maybe next. Naturally, the pool not only won that week, but won big: a million dollars to be divided among the 12 person staff…except Maldonado, of course.When Maldonado showed up for work and saw everyone screaming, crying and celebrating, she thought they were playing a practical joke in her to teach her a lesson. “I knew I was the only one who hadn’t put in the money, so I thought they were pranking me and going out of their way to make me feel something,” she recalled, that “something” presumably being “rotten.”

Jennifer obviously didn’t know her co-workers yet. Not only weren’t they trying to make her feel badly, they had held a meeting and decided to give her a cut of the winnings even though she hadn’t opted in to the enterprise—not a full share, but a significant amount. Jennifer didn’t expect anything, wasn’t going to sue them or hold a grudge, and yet they made her part of the group’s good fortune anyway. This is the Golden Rule exemplified. It is also exemplary ethics: generosity, kindness, empathy, and inclusiveness. The staff”s gesture said, and eloquently, “Welcome to the family! You can trust us. We care about you. We look out for each other, and we handle each other’s mistakes.”

Perfect. Continue reading →

“There Is No Debt Crisis” ? Boy, That’s A Load Off My Mind!

/ Jack Marshall / 56 Comments
"So far, so good!"

“So far, so good!”

The confluence of head-exploding statements and news keeps coming, with the worst being the recent unconscionable announcements out of the mouths of the President and some of his political adversaries that “there is no debt crisis.”

This is exactly like the old joke about the man falling from a 40 story window, being asked by someone on the tenth floor, shouting through a window as he passes, “How are you doing?” “So far, so good!” he answers. Yet these ridiculous, idiotic or intentionally dishonest statements by President Obama, Speaker Boehner, and others are being cited by the news media as reassuring! No, there’s no debt crisis, if you regard that falling optimist as not being in a smashing-to-pulp-on-the-sidewalk-crisis. The debt increased by a trillion dollars last year, and looks as if it will increase by close to a trillion more by October, 2013. The government has no leadership on the issue, and the various sides appear incapable of forging a solution, with the current Administration actually going out of its way to try to make less than 2% in budget cuts under the absurd sequester hurt as much as possible, to convince a math-deficient public that cutting the size of government is not only impossible but undesirable. This scenario doesn’t demonstrate that there’s a debt crisis? Continue reading →

Ethics Note To Paul Krugman: The News Media Isn’t Your Toy

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments
Not bankrupt, at least, not financially...

Not bankrupt, at least, not financially…

The crippling lack of respect and contempt our warring ideological factions have for those on the other side is never better illustrated that when one partisan believes a satirical negative story about an adversary stalwart that any unbiased observer whose brain wasn’t partially melted by hatred would have flagged as false in a heartbeat. Thus do our biases make us stupid. The phenomenon was the basis of some well-derived mockery  last month, when Washington Post blogger Suzy Parker fell for the silly published on the parody website The Daily Currant that Sarah Palin had joined Al-Jazeera, and used the obviously phony tale to hammer Palin for hypocrisy.  I suggested that a journalist this gullible and biased wasn’t qualified to practice her craft, as she was obviously incapable of overcoming her prejudices and personal dislikes so that she could distinguish truth from comforting fiction.

The Right mocked Parker and the Post hardest of all—suuure there’s no liberal bias in the media!—- especially the Bad Boy of rightward blogs, Breitbart. Then along comes another gag story from the same source, The Daily Currant, announcing that New York Times tax-and-spend advocate, progressive cheerleader and Pulitzer prize-winning economist Paul Krugman has declared for bankruptcy, and Brietbart, for exactly the same reasons Parker believed that Palin would go to work for the Arabs,  couldn’t figure out that it wasn’t  true. Breitbart published this: Continue reading →

Ethics Dunce: Devon Gluck

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments
"Hmmmm...keep this money that isn't mine, or return it to the owner? What a knotty ethical puzzle!"

“Hmmmm…keep this money that isn’t mine, or return it to the owner? What a knotty ethical puzzle!”

Devon Gluck, a senior finance major at the University of Delaware, was the surprised recipient of $1800 spit at him by a malfunctioning ATM machine. Obviously the money wasn’t his, or meant for him. Obviously it belonged to the bank, and another depositor. Obviously, the ethical thing to do was to return the money, just as you would return a wallet full of money dropped by someone walking right in front of you. Doing otherwise is theft.

Nonetheless, it took 20-year-old Devon four days and consultation with his father to come to a conclusion that any properly raised 8-year-old should have reached in about 30 seconds. After thinking about all the things he could do with the cash that wasn’t his, he finally returned it to the bank.

Whoopie.

Devon Gluck is going into the finance field, where he will be, sadly, right at home with his hair-trigger ethical instincts. Our families, our schools, our leaders and  and our culture are plainly failing to install even rudimentary ethics alarms in rising generations.

You’re not getting your hands on any of my money, Devon, if I can help it. I recommend that everyone else exercise similar caution. See if your Dad can explain to you why.

_________________________________

Facts: Delaware online

Graphic: Debt No Problem

 

UPDATE: Spinning The Woodward-White House Dispute

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments
Here's a question, Gene: What the hell is going on???

Here’s a question, Gene: What the hell is going on???

Now that the e-mail that apparently caused Washington Post icon Bob Woodward to feel he was being threatened has been released, several new questions and observations arise:

1. In the e-mail, at least, the senior official, now confirmed to be economic advisor Gene Sperling, never denies the central point of the Woodward column at issue: that President Obama, not congressional Republicans, was the first to propose the sequester, contrary to the statements of Jack Lew and the President himself, in contradiction to the blame narrative being pushed by the White House. This means that either the White House concedes its obfuscation, or that it chose to muddy the waters and undermine Woodward’s credibility by focusing on another aspect of his analysis where it was subject to legitimate challenge.

2. Why did Woodward feel threatened by this ostensibly “friendly” message? He is a veteran of such exchanges and presumably adept at translating Washington-speak and reading between the lines. I yield to his reporter instincts, but frankly, I don’t see it. I presume the threats in his phone argument with Sperling were more overt. I don’t know that, however. Continue reading →

The Red Caboose On The Penn State Ethics Train Wreck Arrives: The Paterno Family’s Report

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

1-train-wreck-kari-tirrell

To understand what the Joe Paterno’s family’s report (released on Feb. 10) regarding the late Penn State football coach’s culpability in the Jerry Sandusky child abuse cover-up means, one has to understand what lawyers do, and why it is completely ethical for them to do so, as long as their role isn’t misrepresented by them or their clients.

Lawyers exist to allow non-lawyers to have access to a legal system that is (needlessly) complicated and technical, and to provide their legal training, analytical skills and advocacy abilities to their clients’ legal and legitimate needs and objectives. A lawyer who interposes his or her own opinions, judgments and desires on the client without being asked to do so is, in most cases, behaving unprofessionally and unethically. This is an essential principle to grasp, and yet the vast majority of the public do not grasp it. Nonetheless, without the partisanship a lawyer brings to the attorney-client relationship, regardless of whether a client is rich or poor, altruistic or venal, kind or cruel, we would all be slaves to the laws we supposedly create ourselves, through the machinery of a republic.

An independent investigation of the Penn State administration’s failure to stop serial child molester Jerry Sandusky from harming young children found that iconic football coach Joe Paterno was at the center of the school’s misconduct and the catalyst for it. The investigation was performed by Louis Freeh, a lawyer, a former prosecutor, a former federal judge, and once the head of the F.B.I.  His charge was to find out what happened and who was at fault—not to nail Paterno or anyone else.  It was an independent investigation, with no dictated result. Don Van Natta, a sportswriter whom I supposed should not be expected to understand such distinctions, writes,

“If the Freeh report was a prosecutor’s relentless opening statement that delivered devastating, far-reaching consequences, the Paternos’ rebuttal is a defense attorney’s closing argument brimming with outrage and fury.”

Wrong, wrong, wrong. The Freeh report was not a work of advocacy in an adversarial setting, but akin to a judge’s objective decision after reviewing the relevant and available facts. The Paterno family report, in contrast, is a work of advocacy, like a brief arguing an appeal to overturn a judicial decision against a lawyer’s client. The charge given to Freeh in his investigation was to find out what went wrong and why. (It began with the assumption that something did go wrong, which was reasonable, since a child predator had somehow managed to roam the Penn State campus for decades, including a ten-year period after he had been seen sexually assaulting a child in a Penn State shower.) Freeh was not told to get Penn State off the hook, or to pin as much as possible on Joe Paterno. The authors of the Paterno family report, however, were charged with the task of rebutting and discrediting Freeh’s report in order to rescue Joe Paterno’s reputation and legacy. It is an advocacy memorandum, like the torture memos and the recent Justice Department justification of the killer drone program. Continue reading →

Now THIS Is Hypocrisy: Jack Lew Edition

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

cayman-islandsI know it pains many of you to hear it, but integrity has not been one of President Obama’s evident virtues, and the nomination of  his Chief of Staff Jack Lew to replace Timothy Geithner as Secretary of the Treasury is a particularly vivid example. The nomination demonstrates either hypocrisy or dishonesty (or both) no matter how one chooses to look at it.

This has nothing to do with Lew’s qualifications for the job: I’m certain he is sufficiently qualified, and is as likely as anyone else to help lead the nation through the fiscal wilderness, which is to say “not very.” The problem with Lew’s nomination, in the context of the President’s integrity, is two-fold. Although Obama and his campaign’s successful strategy was to demonize Mitt Romney as a grasping and venal corporate raider who accumulated big corporate bucks while doing little of value, Jack Lew’s resume includes receiving a $945,000 bonus in January 2009 after a short time working at Citigroup, which was in the process of collapsing financially and seeking (and receiving)a massive taxpayer bailout.  Obama also made hay during the campaign by implying there was something shady about Romney’s investments in Cayman islands-based institutions. Jack Lew. meanwhile, oversaw Cayman island investment funds while at Citigroup. In his 2008 campaign, Obama took special aim at one of them known as Ugland House, and a Senate hearing on the subject designated it as a facilitator of tax evasion. Jack Lew had investments in the Cayman islands, and, like Mitt Romney, had them with Ugland House. 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 →