Professions

More on Richard Blumenthal, Connecticut’s Lying Attorney General

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

Now that we know a little bit more about Richard Blumenthal, the Connecticut Attorney General whose pursuit of a U.S. Senate seat has him periodically masquerading as a Vietnam War veteran, it is clear that simply defeating him at the polls isn’t enough. He should be impeached as Attorney General, and deserves professional discipline from the Connecticut Bar as well. Why? Well, he’s an unrepentant serial liar on a grand scale. Lawyers, including Attorney Generals, are prohibited from engaging in dishonesty, misrepresentation, fraud and deceit, and it is professional misconduct when this rises to a level that calls a lawyer’s trustworthiness and fitness to practice law into question. Does pretending to have credentials, especially military combat experience, that you do not have in order to get a job reach this level?

Of course it does. Continue reading →

Baseball and Civil Rights: Doing the Right Thing, Kicking and Screaming

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

“The Biz of Baseball” discusses a historical document proving that even as Jackie Robinson was preparing to make his color barrier-shattering debut with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1946, an internal committee examining the race issue for Major League Baseball was arguing that integrating the teams at the time would be a mistake. Author Maury Brown concludes:

“As the 1946 steering committee document shows, there were those at the highest level of the sport that saw African-American players as beneath the quality of their White counterparts, and that they saw the influx of African-American fans as something that would lower franchise values. Take that in, as baseball takes credit for being at the front of the Civil Rights movement.”

Major League Baseball is engaged in just such a credit-taking exercise now, as it prepares to host its annual ” Civil Rights Game, “an  exhibition between the Cardinals and Reds in Cincinnati. Continue reading →

Ethics Quote of the Week: Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

“That doesn’t matter. What matters is that he delivers.”

—-Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell on the “Morning Joe” show on MSNBC, discussing his (and President Obama’s) support for Sen. Arlen Specter, who is locked in a dead-heat race for re-nomination with challenging Congressman Joe Sestak. Continue reading →

Ethics Dunce: Ken Griffey, Jr.

/ Jack Marshall / Leave a comment

The reports are that Hall of Fame-bound Seattle outfielder Ken Griffey, Jr. was passed over as a pinch-hitter in a recent Mariners game because he was asleep in the clubhouse. Other Mariner players leaked this embarrassment to the press; Griffey won’t discuss it, except to say that the reports are “not entirely accurate.” Others have noted that the outfielder is a serial napper, and has slept during games in the past. In other words, no big deal.

It is a big deal. Griffey gets paid $2,350,000 in 2010 to play baseball or be available to play baseball for approximately three hours a day for six months. If he’s napping during that three hours, he hasn’t fulfilled his obligation to be fully fit, awake and ready to play.

“But the baseball season is a grind!”

$2,350,000.

“It’s boring just sitting on the bench!”

$2,350,000.

“You don’t know what it’s like playing a professional sport!”

$2,350,000!

When a police officer, a fireman, a lawyer or another professional is unable to do his or her job because he is taking a nap, the response is usually a warning, or even dismissal. Homer Simpson sleeps on the job in his position at the nuclear energy plant, but 1) he’s a cartoon character and 2) he isn’t making $2,350,000.

There is a minimum level of diligence, loyalty and commitment employers are entitled to from those they employ, no matter what their salaries are. Sleeping on the job when one is making millions, however, adds significant theft to the mix. If Griffey wasn’t ill or hadn’t hadn’t had a recent run-in with a tsetse fly, he not only owes the Mariners an apology; he owes them about $14,000.

Ethics for Bureacracies—On An Index Card

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

Ethicist Bob Stone has proposed a useful and perceptive solution to the perplexing problem of lax ethics in government bureaucracies. Calling on them to adopt “a strong sense of mission and a culture of trust, with authority and responsibility shifted from the few at the top to the many front-line workers,” Stone declares that too often “what passes for ethics is merely another set of rules to comply with, and ethics training usually consists of badgering workers about bribery, conflict of interest and favoritism.”

As a solution, Bob proposes a statement of ethical principles, so brief that it would easily fit on an index card:

I will:

  • Do my best at work
  • Avoid conflict of interest
  • Speak truth to power
  • Be a good citizen
  • Shun any private gain from my employment
  • Act impartially
  • Treat others the way I would like to be treated
  • Report waste, fraud, and corruption

When in doubt, my test is can I explain my actions to my mother or to my child.

Stone recommends that leaders and managers customize this to their own organizations, print it, distribute it, and then–and this is the most important part—regularly use events and decisions to discuss ethical lessons and principles with the staff, using the Statement of Principles as the starting point.

You can read his entire essay here. I recommend it. Bob has a long and distinguished background in that Mother of All Bureaucracies, the Pentagon. He knows what he’s talking about.

Next: Paramilitary “Jolly Rancher” Raids?

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

“No tolerance policy” is clearly a misnomer: what it appears to mean in practice is “self-designed trap to expose the incompetence and lack of basic fairness of school personnel. According to that definition, “no tolerance” polices are working extremely well.

For example, an Orchard, Texas third-grader at Brazos Elementary was given a week’s detention for first-degree possession a Jolly Rancher. The school’s principal and superintendent said they were simply complying with a state law that limits junk food in schools. The miscreant, Leighann Adair, 10, was eating lunch  when a teacher saw the candy and confiscated it. Her punishment is that she must be separated from other students during lunch and recess for the rest of the week. Continue reading →

Being Fair to Elena Kagan

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

The long knives are already out for Solicitor General Elena Kagan, now the latest Supreme Court nominee. Once, before the late Ted Kennedy shamelessly accused Robert Bork of being a racist, a sexist and a monster to boot, U.S. Presidents were accorded the respect by both parties in the Senate have confirmed whoever they chose for the High Court, unless the choice was so cynical or politically tainted as to demand defeat. No more. Now each nominee has to thoroughly debase herself or himself by denying the political philosophies that produced his or her nomination in the first place. The first casualty of the nomination process is integrity.

Is it too late to go back? Is it too late to be fair? Continue reading →

The Problem of Fairness, and David Ortiz: A Case Study

/ Jack Marshall / Leave a comment

Fairness is a core ethical value. It is also one of the most difficult to embody. We all know what fairness is in the abstract: treatment of others characterized by impartiality and honesty, and an avoidance of self-interest, prejudice, or favoritism. In complex situations involving many interested parties, however, seeking fairness becomes a dilemma wrapped in a conflict surrounded by contradictions. One of these complex situations now faces the Boston Red Sox, as the baseball team deals with the travails of its designated hitter David Ortiz. Sports has a fascinating habit of crystallizing ethical problems, and the Ortiz case demonstrates how hard it is to be “fair.” Continue reading →

Ethics Hero: New York Met Jason Bay

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

Sometimes all it takes to be an Ethics Hero is being nice, especially if it’s in a way that most people like you have abandoned.

New Mets left fielder Jason Bay has moved to Larchmont, New York, where his presence is causing something of a buzz among the residents, especially the younger baseball fans. Gabriel Tugendstein, who is 11, was especially excited, and here we defer to his mother, writing in the New York Times… Continue reading →

Ethics Dunce: Roman Polanski

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

I know, this is akin to shooting fish in a barrel. Still, Roman Polanski’s self-righteous protest of what he sees as victimization and injustice, recently published in the French magazine La Règle du Jeu, is worth noting if only as a useful case study of how privilege and rationalizations can lead to ethical delusion.

Polanski, proclaiming, “I can now remain silent no longer!”—which I doubt will take its place next to Dreyfus’s “I am innocent!” in the annals of memorable prisoner quotes—makes it clear in his statement that he has no remorse and admits no serious wrongdoing for drugging, raping and sodomizing a 13-year old girl, the 33-year-old crime that began his legal problems. Oh, he accuses authorities of being unfeeling to the now-grown victim, who has repeatedly said she would like to see the entire issue disposed of and forgotten so she can get on with her life, conveniently forgetting that his brutality and subsequent refusal to be accountable to U.S. justice are the sole reasons she is suffering. Continue reading →