In a classic example of “Be careful what you wish for,” I had been thinking about how none of the recent comments, excellent though many were, quite struck the “Comment of the Day” gong for me, and then, like the answer granted by a perverse genie, this turns up. A reader named Lawrence Reliford argues that Stephen McDow had every right to spend the money erroneously deposited in his bank account, and in the process evokes—let’s see—six rationalizations, three misconceptions, two bad analogies, one wonderful Malaprop and a partridge in a pear tree. (I may have miscounted; this can also be an ethics quiz.) On a more depressing note, I am quite certain that a larger portion of the population than any of us would be comfortable admitting agree with Lawrence. You can find my response to his comment with the original post, here...but please feel free to write your own. Lawrence needs all the guidance he can get. Here is The Comment of the Day: Continue reading
Finance
Ethics Quote of the Week: James W.Hudson
Who ARE those guys?
“Tell the world about your guy in the rocking chair who was once gung ho, climbing mountains and dodging a ruthless enemy bent on his torture and destruction. Climb on his knee yourself, if you must, but get his story.”
—-James W. Hudson, as quoted by the Washington Post in his obituary today. Hudson, 93, was an OSS operative during World War II who was dropped behind German lines to set up an intelligence network and disrupt supply networks.
James Hudson was one of those guys for sure. Continue reading
The John Edwards Indictment
Cornell law professor Michael Dorf makes my heart leap in admiration by bucking the popular trend—especially among Democrats and soft-hearted media types who 1) only like seeing Republicans and conservatives get in trouble for sex scandals and 2) think Edwards “has suffered enough” —of arguing that the prosecution of John Edwards for campaign fundraising violations is based on a weak legal case. On his blog, Prof. Dorf argues persuasively to the contrary:
“At its core, the indictment alleges that Edwards knowingly: 1) in violation of federal campaign finance law, accepted money well in excess of the individual campaign contribution limits; 2) spent that money to hide his extramarital affair with Rielle Hunter; and 3) in violation of federal campaign finance law, failed to disclose either the donations or the expenditures….
“…The real question with respect to the government’s point number 1) is whether the hundreds of thousands of dollars were given to Edwards ” for the purpose of influencing any election for Federal office.” Subject to a whole lot of irrelevant exceptions, that’s the statutory definition of a “campaign contribution.” It is nearly inconceivable that the money for hiding the Hunter affair was not “for the purpose of influencing” the 2008 Presidential primary. What other possible purpose could it have served? Continue reading
Today’s Ethics Quiz: How Do You React To Congressional Insider Trading?
Gekko for Congress. He has what It takes...Insider trading experience!
An study in the journal Business and Politics last week reported that the investments of members of the House of Representatives outperformed those of the average investor by 55 basis points per month, or 6 percent annually. It concluded that lawmakers are taking advantage of inside information to make significant profits, engaging in conduct that would send a Gordon Gekko or Martha Stewart to jail.
“We find strong evidence that members of the House have some type of non-public information which they use for personal gain,” the four researchers who authored “Abnormal Returns From the Common Stock Investments of Members of the U.S. House of Representatives” wrote. Continue reading
The Great Norwalk Kindergarten Heist
The Tanya McDonald controversy
A homeless woman is facing 20 years in prison if she is convicted of stealing over $15,000 of Norwalk, Conn. taxpayer funds. The details of her crime are controversial: she lied about her residence to get her child into what she believed was a better school system, but one that, as non-resident, she was not entitled to use. The details also create a tangled mess of law, justice, ethics, fairness, compassion, public policy, finances, class and education.
Let’s try to unravel it, shall we? Continue reading
Oh, Shut Up, Rush.
I tuned in to Rush Limbaugh this afternoon expecting what I got, but hoping otherwise. Sure enough, Limbaugh spent the first half-hour of his broadcast mocking President Obama for taking “single-handed” credit for Osama bin Laden’s death, counting the number of times the President uttered the words “me,” “I,” “my,” and “mine,” and minimizing any credit due to the Chief Executive and Commander-in-Chief when the nation he leads finally accomplishes something it has been trying to do for a decade.
The President of the United States gets the blame and is held accountable for gas prices he cannot control, international upheavals, incompetent local disaster management after hurricanes, economic meltdowns caused by lazy regulators, irresponsible investors, unqualified homeowners and greedy business executives, the botched clean-up of unprecedented oil spills, the abuse of prisoners by hillbilly soldiers thousands of miles away, and every other social, societal and economic ill imaginable. That’s his job, and he wanted it: fair or not, he has to take it. Continue reading
“Give Back” Ethics
Excellent! But is he giving, or "giving back"?
John Stossel, the ABC house conservative who yielded to the inevitable and finally migrated to Fox News, takes issue with what he sees as corporate America’s capitulating to the distorting rhetoric of capitalism-bashing. On his website, Stossel cites with approval this letter, sent by George Mason University Economics Professor Don Boudreaux to the Ritz-Carlton hotel chain:
“Dear Ritz-Carlton:
“Thanks for your e-mail celebrating your and your employees’ participation in “Give Back Getaways” – activities in which you and your employees (along with some of your customers) “give back to the community.”
“Have you taken something that doesn’t belong to you? If so, by all means give it back!…If, though, you’ve not taken anything that doesn’t belong to you, you possess nothing that you can give BACK. Continue reading
Now We Know: 22.5% of Business Execs Don’t Know What Ethics Is
The Potter Factor: is 20% too much?
David Sokol was widely believed to be the anointed successor to billionaire Warren Buffett at the helm of Berkshire Hathaway Inc. until he resigned unexpectedly, following shocking revelations about his personal stock trading. Clever Sokol! He purchased ten million dollars worth of shares in Lubrizol Corp., a chemical company, then persuaded his boss, Buffett, to acquire it. Buffett agreed, the purchase swelled the values of the stock, and Sokol then sold his shares at a hefty profit, about 3 million dollars.
Sokol lost his job over the transaction, which has tarnished Buffett’s reputation, but he got his money. He appears to have found a neat little loophole in the insider trading prohibitions, which make it illegal for an individual to profit from investments made with the assistance of information that is not generally known. If Sokol knew that Buffett was going to purchase Lurizol and bought the stock to profit from it, he could be headed to jail. Because he made the purchase before he and Buffett discussed the deal, however, he’s only heading to the bank. Galling as it is, most authorities agree that he broke no laws. Continue reading
Ethics Quiz: The Home As Billboard—“Ick!” or Unethical?
The Ad firm Adzookie will make their monthly mortgage payments for people willing to turn their homes into billboards. According to the company’s CEO, it has received over 1,000 applications from people willing to have their houses turned into something like the eye-sore in the photo.
Your Ethics Quiz: Is this unethical conduct by the company, or merely disgusting, provoking our “Ick!” reflex?
For the Unethical side, consider: Continue reading
Outrageous Corporate Conduct 2011: Transocean’s Unconscionable Bonuses
"Sure, but other than THAT: great night at the theater, right?"
I believe that much of the time the corporate sector is unfairly treated by the media, politicians, and the public. Part of this conviction arises from my experience working at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, directly under its current president when he was a rising young Turk. I dealt with corporate executives every day, and got to see the challenges of big business from their side. Most of the time, they struck me as genuinely concerned about workers, communities, fairness, while believing, of course, that an unfettered private sector was in the economic interest of everyone.
Increasingly, however, I see corporate behavior that is so arrogant, so transparently greedy, so contemptuous of the public’s intelligence, so blatantly, obnoxiously wrong that I wonder if it was all a dream. There was AIG, accepting billions from American taxpayers to save it from the consequences of its own fiduciary crimes, immediately spending some of it on lush retreats and parties for its executives. There were the leaders of Goldman Sachs, telling gape-jawed U.S. Senators that, no, they didn’t see anything unethical about selling their trusted clients investment products so awful that the company made money betting on their failure. There are the U.S. banks, hoarding their money and refusing to refinance mortgages that were unconscionable to begin with, preferring to make the nation’s economic problems worse by foreclosing on families’ homes rather than making a good faith effort to undo a human and social catastrophe that was substantially of their own making.
Now comes the news that Transocean Ltd., owner of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig, has announced that it is giving millions of dollars in bonuses to its executives after “the best year in safety performance in our company’s history.” Which seems perfectly reasonable, unless you want to make a big deal over that one little Gulf oil spill incident last April…you know, the one that began when a Transocean oil rig exploded, killing eleven people including nine Transocean employees. Continue reading
Ethics Alarms 