Government & Politics

Blame Everyone for Infrastructure Ruin: Unethical, Irresponsible Priorities from Reagan to Obama

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

In the early Eighties, I oversaw an independent study funded by the Highway Users Federation and the National Chamber Foundation called “Transport Tomorrow,” exploring the immediate need for transportation infrastructure repair and expansion in all modes of transportation: roads, railway, waterway, and airports. In the process of learning how dire the need for massive construction and repair was if America’s future commercial needs were to be met, the study commission made a disturbing discovery: urban water and sewer systems were crumbling too. There was literally not enough money to fix all the roads, bridges, tunnels, water mains and sewer pipes that had to be fixed, and the consequences of not doing so would be economic paralysis and worse, disease and even social unrest.

In the face of this looming and undeniably real disaster, the Reagan Administration did—pretty much nothing. Neither did the Bush, Clinton and Bush II administrations, and even the Chamber of Commerce failed to make infrastructure repair one of its key issues. Oh, there were new projects, of course, and when a major bridge started to dump cars into rivers it was repaired. Holes were patched, pipes were replaced here and there. But the full-fledged commitment to the unsexy and incredibly expensive job of keeping the infrastructure sufficient to meet the needs of the nation, and protecting it from the ravages of use and time was deferred, and deferred, and deferred. Something was always more important: wars…tax cuts…the environment…health care. The Obama Administration is following this irresponsible pattern, except it has combined with the profligacy of the Bush Administration to push the Federal deficit into unprecedented dangerous territory. New taxes on just about everybody and everything are going to be needed to stave off financial ruin, and there will be little political will to spend any of the income on something as mundane, but crucial, as sewers.

The problem, however, has become infinitely worse since 1983, when “Transport Tomorrow” was released, and then as now, the attitude of our elected leaders is to let the next guy deal with the problem. Is this responsible? No. Is it cowardly? Yes. Is it a blatant, intentional and knowing distortion of priorities that will threaten American prosperity, jobs, and lives? Absolutely.

Here is a small glimpse of the enormity of the crisis: Continue reading →

Sunday Ethics Round-Up: Cynical Fines, Drunk Norwegians, Lazy Newsmen and Pitiful Ballplayers

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

Here are some ethics issues to ponder from the recent news and around the Web:

  • Who says it pays to be ethical? The astounding insistence, under oath, by Goldman Sachs executives that they had done nothing wrong in selling admittedly “crummy” investment products to clients while using the company’s own money to bet that the same products would fail will not be sufficiently punished or contradicted by the S.E.C.’s cynical cash settlement of its suit against the firm. For a $500 million penalty, Goldman Sachs is off the hook for the equivalent of four days’ income, as the Obama Administration claims to the unsophisticated public (“Isn’t $500 million a lot of money?”) that it is “getting tough” with Wall Street. The fact is that Goldman Sachs’ unethical maneuvers paid off handsomely, and nothing has happened that will discourage it from finding loopholes in another set of regulations and making another killing while deceiving investors legally and, by the Bizarro World ethics of the investment world, “ethically.” You can read a perceptive analysis here. Continue reading →

Ethical Standards, Not Laws or Regulations, Must Enforce Broadcast Civility

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

A federal appeals court just struck down controversial the Federal Communications Commission policy on indecency, ruling that regulations barring the use of “fleeting expletives” on radio and TV were too vague and could inhibit free speech….even if that free speech was smutty.

Good. Continue reading →

The Washington Post: Embarrassed into Covering the News

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

Washington Post ombudsman Andrew Alexander wonders why it took his paper so long to cover a story with obvious importance and disturbing implications: the seeming race-based decision of the Obama Justice Department to avoid pursuing a voter intimidation case against the New Black Panthers, even though a YouTube video showed persuasive evidence that an offense was real and substantial. Ethics Alarms, for example, wrote about the story more than two weeks ago.

Alexander is to be saluted for raising, though his conclusion is unsatisfying and more than a little weaselly. Continue reading →

Obama’s Unethical Gift to the Trial Lawyers

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

After January 1, 2011, when you begin to process all the new taxes coming your way and all the deductions you can no longer take, think about this:

The nation’s largest trial lawyer trade group, the American Association for Justice, has announced it was informed by Obama Administration officials that the U.S. Department of Treasury will give its members (and all tort lawyers) a tax break on contingency fee lawsuits. The new provision is expected to mirror proposed legislation by Sen. Arlen Specter, himself a lawyer, that was previously rejected by Congress last year. That bill would have allowed attorneys to deduct up-front costs in contingency fee lawsuits. Continue reading →

Shrugging Off Corrupt Fundraising Practices in Congress

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

While they were debating the just-passed financial reform bill on the floor of Congress, eight members of Congress walked out of the Capitol into fundraising meetings and events where they solicited and received contributions from the very financial institutions that the bill would regulate. Some of the contributions came as crucial votes were taken.  From a New York Times report: Continue reading →

Trust, the News and Journalist Biases: You Can’t Get There From Here

/ Jack Marshall / 24 Comments

Over at Tech Crunch, founder Michael Arrington responds to the firing of Octavia Nasr and the resignation of Helen Thomas with this argument:

“I think journalists should have the right to express their opinions on the topics they cover. More importantly, I think readers have a right to know what those opinions are. Frankly, I’d like to know sooner rather than later just how insane some of these people at CNN and Fox News are. To stop them from giving me that information is just another way to lie to me.”

Arrington is right, of course. The pose that journalists are politically objective is almost always a fraud, and efforts by organizations like The Washington Post and the San Francisco Chronicle to prevent their reporters from doing things like attending political rallies for politicians they admire or expressing strong opinions on social websites have nothing to do with preserving journalistic objectivity, but rather with preserving the illusion of journalistic objectivity. “All this bullshit about objectivity in journalism is just a trick journalists use to try to gain credibility, and the public eats it up,” Arrington says.

But Arrington is also wrong.  Continue reading →

The Emmys, “South Park,” and Integrity

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

The Muslim extremist threat that cowed the Comedy Channel into censoring South Park has certainly spawned a bumper crop of unethical attempts at protest. First we had the juvenile “Let’s Insult Islam Because We Can Day” protest, better known as “Everybody Draw Muhammad Day,” which made a lot of completely innocent and law-abiding Muslims upset without accomplishing anything else—not even a good laugh. Now the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, admittedly never a bastion of fairness, honesty or integrity, has made its incoherent protest by nominating the two “South Park” episodes that were censored for. Neither has been viewed intact on Comedy Central, nor are either viewable online. Nonetheless, the Academy says these episodes are among the “best animated programs,” despite the fact that the programs, in the forms that supposedly warrant the honor, have never been seen. Continue reading →

CNN’s Ocatavia Nasr: Another Victim of Cognitive Dissonance

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

Octavia Nasr, a CNN editor and reporter for two decades, just got her walking papers for a 140-character tweet reading, “Sad to hear of the passing of Sayyed Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah.. One of Hezbollah’s giants I respect a lot.” The problem is that this particular “giant” was an anti-American, anti-Israeli terrorist who advocated suicide bombings and who encouraged terrorist acts by Hezbollah. In an explanatory blog post that failed to save her job, Nasr blamed the limitations of Twitter, and explained that she didn’t really admire him, just his stance against the abuse of Muslim women.

Maybe. Continue reading →

Thought Police at the Transportation Security Administration

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

Leave it to the Government to give us a definitive example of this problem: how do we tell if someone is being unethical or just infuriatingly dumb? Most of the time, of course, we can’t tell.  You can conclude, however, that when high-placed leadership in a government agency, without a legitimate reason for doing so,  takes action that makes those who worry about excessive government intrusion into private thought, speech and conduct quake in their boots, the end result is the same. Such actions cause an erosion of trust, the lifeblood of democratic societies. That makes the conduct dumb and unethical. Continue reading →