U.S. Society

Ethics Corrupter Weekend, Part IV. How To Make A Trump

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments
"I could only give you a B. If you want an A, you'll need to apply yourself..."

“I could only give you a B. If you want an A, you’ll need to apply yourself…”

Former Pennsylvania high school teacher Wesley Amy was convicted last week of changing the grades of female students in exchange for their nude pictures.

Amy was a State College High School teacher before he was charged with corruption of minors. Three female students testified that their teacher allowed them to cut classes and gave them high grades for no work as long as sent him nude photos. What a deal.

The arrangement was discovered when another teacher testified that when she took over Amy’s class, she found that some of the female students were receiving good grades without doing any documented work. The fact that this kind of untrustworthy species of teacher (and human being) flourishes in our schools is not news any more, but this is more sinister in some respects than the run-of-the-mill Mary Kay LeTourneau. Wesley Amy was still teaching these students; he was teaching them the sleazy ways of corruption, quid pro quo, short-cuts and fakery. Why should they care if their perv teacher gets off on their selfies? They’re getting great grades, and as their corrupting parents and others keep telling them, it’s not the education that matters, it’s the grades and the diploma. What’s the matter with this arrangement? Nothing, in their eyes. Listen to Donald Trump, the GOP front-runner, talk about how people do what you want them to do in you make it worth their while. They have, thanks to Mr. Amy, learned that corruption and bribery pays.

The prosecutor says the girls were brave to testify under the circumstances. What was brave about it? What would have been brave, and what would have proved that the previous decade of public schooling, not to mention the guidance of their parents, left them with at least the seed of understanding right from wrong, would be if they had reported their teacher’s offer five minutes after it was made.

They didn’t, though.

It was too good a deal to pass up.

___________________

Graphic: Riverfront Times

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

Ethics Corrupter Weekend, Part II. Unethical And Corrupting Quote Of The Week: PBS Anchor Judy Woodruff

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

who_cares

“But, for the audience, why does it matter? Why did that — why does it matter whether she was saying one thing?”

—PBS anchor Judy Woodruff, in a discussion of the Benghazi hearings and the revelation in her e-mails that Hillary Clinton immediately discounted the YouTube video explanation that she later embraced without equivocation in public statements and interviews, as well as in discussions with the victims’ families.

Has there ever been a more self-evident unethical quote from a U.S. broadcast journalist?

What does it matter if the Secretary of State lied to the public?

What does it matter if the liar is a candidate for President?

What does it matter if our leaders “say one thing” to confidants—in Clinton’s case, her daughter, and another to everyone else?

What does it matter if the Obama administration falsely and intentionally  blamed four deaths on a YouTube video, rather than the fact that Obama’s claims of eviscerating al Qaeda were campaign hype?

What does it matter???

Sure, Judy, and what does it matter if the mainstream news media doesn’t care if our leaders are trustworthy and honest, and regard outright lying by them as trivial?

I’m not going to waste any more time explaining what’s unethical about this statement. Any adults who can’t figure it out on their own are lost causes, and to explain it to normal people insults their intelligence.

_____________________

Pointer: Newsbusters

Beating The Naked Teacher Principle: The Provocatively Clad Bodybuilding Teacher Principle.

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

min jensen

It is important to remember that the The Naked Teacher Principle   doesn’t state that pre-college teachers who allow themselves to be seen on the internet in states of undress likely to arouse the lust of their students should and must be fired—though most of them should be—but that they have no legitimate complaint if they are. Teachers who must command respect, serve as role models, and of course, teach, should not permit themselves to become pin-ups and peep-show stars for their students. At very least, they owe their employers and their students’ parents advance notice.

Mindy Jensen, a Utah middle school teacher,  has a second (or perhaps first) career as a bikini model and fitness competitor. She came under the  cloud of The Naked Teacher Principle the usual way: a student was surfing the web and cried out: “Holy crap! That’s my teacher, and she’s HOT!”  The news (and images) spread around the community and student body quickly. Parents called the Instagram photos “pornographic” and demanded that Jensen be dismissed. The school gave her an ultimatum: take down the photos, make her account private, or get sacked.

Jensen made the Instagram account private, then changed her mind. . Explaining her decision, Jensen told ABC Utah,  “Why am I taking this picture off, I get comments and messages that it’s inspirational to them and these women like my story. If I put it to private, it’s not going to reach these people that might need and understand me.”

The school has since backed down,  opting instead to hold training sessions for  parents on teaching kid to be careful on the Web—you know, like avoiding hot photos of their teachers. (Good luck with THAT.)

I think several features of this episode on The Naked Teacher Principle spectrum led to this result. In 2014, in this post about whether the NTP applies to non-teaching bodybuilding mothers, I raised the issue of bodybuilding teachers on the web, and posited this photo as an example for discussion: Continue reading →

Comment of the Day: “Joe Biden, The Republicans, And The Lawn Chair Test”

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments
"Cheer up!" said the voice. "Things could be worse!" So I cheered up, and, sure enough, things got worse!

“Cheer up!” said the Voice. “Things could be worse!” So I cheered up, and, sure enough, things got worse…

This will be the second Presidential election for Ethics Alarms. As I learned in the first one (2012), keeping politics out of the posts and discussion are futile. Nonetheless, I will work to stay away from policy debates unless there is clear ethical content,  as  with illegal immigration, abortion, income distribution or gun control. Leadership is the second topic that Ethics Alarms encompasses, in part because character and the ethical handling of power are so important to ethical leadership. Competence is also an important component. An indirect message of the recent post about Joe Biden was that the United States, though it always needs competent leadership in the White House, needs it even more than usual, and potential candidates for the job do not appear to have it.

Veteran Ethics Alarms commenter Michael R has delivered a useful and troubling addendum to what I wrote. Here is his Comment of the Day on the post Joe Biden, The Republicans, And The Lawn Chair Test: Continue reading →

The New York Times Goes Full Orwell

/ Jack Marshall / 38 Comments

ralphie_soap

Expanding on the recent alarm sounded here about the Democratic Party and progressives increasingly resorting to the tools and values of totalitarianism in order to by-pass democracy in their quest for power, I must flag today’s editorial by the New York Times, calling for the “retirement” of the word “alien.” As in all disguised efforts to indoctrinate by making opposing views impossible to express or even think, the Times uses a set of false arguments to achieve its goal, which is apparently open borders. Why does the most preeminent newspaper in the country have such a sickening and irresponsible view? I don’t know. These are the people who determine the content of the news, however. I’m not sure which would make this screed more frightening, the fact that the editors don’t recognize the methods of totalitarianism, or the fact that they do, and are embracing them.

Here, in part, is the editorial’s argument for “retiring,” as in “banning,” the word “alien,”  with my comments in bold:

Over the years, the label has struck newcomers as a quirky aspect of moving to America. Many, understandably, have also come to regard it as a loaded, disparaging word, used by those who regard immigrants as less-than-human burdens rather than as assets.

[ Straw man. Who that was not immediately condemned far and wide has ever described immigrants as less than human in the last 50 years? The Times is engaging in deceit: this editorial isn’t about “alien,” but illegal aliens—you know, the people that Donald Trump was obviously talking about and the Left and illegal alien advocates intentionally misrepresented his comments to push their agenda. As for the term “illegal immigrants,” damn rights it’s disparaging, because they are illegal, and citizens and newspaper editors ought to regard law-breakers as “burdens rather than as assets.”]
Continue reading →

Unethical Website of the Month: Dogsbite.Org [UPDATED]

/ Jack Marshall / 355 Comments

group shot

This despicable website, created by phobics, liars, fools and bigots to promote dog breed prejudice and persecution of responsible dog owners, is discredited by the vast, vast  majority of dog experts, breeders, and people with any knowledge of dogs. It is useful in a way, in that its rhetoric mirrors that of the anti-Jewish, final solution advocates of the Nazi regime, and the most virulent American racists, like the KKK. (A dog breed is exactly like a human race.) It also apes the logical fallacies of those who want to ban guns or engage in racial profiling.

Although a mass of data and history proves that pit bull-related breeds are no more inherently dangerous than any powerful breed and arguably less, Dogsbite.Org is leading a vendetta against both the breeds and lawful, loving owners, reasoning that dogfighting uses pit bull-type breeds, and pit bulls used for fighting are more likely to be dangerous (as any dog so abused  may be), so to kill two birds with one stone, it makes sense to wipe out not just any individual dangerous dog of the type but any dog that is a hybrid of the a “pit bull breed” and any dog that looks like what people think is a “pit bull”, in part because there is no such breed as “pit bull.”

Thus because some “pit bulls” are abused, all should be exterminated.This is essentially the argument of the unethical people at PETA, which announced that it is supporting DogsBite.Org with the batty, but no more so than many of  their positions, argument that we need to destroy the dogs in order to save them.  Continue reading →

“Why Does Hillary Think Her E-mail Scandal Is So Funny?” And Other Brief Ethics Notes To Get The Week Off To A Depressing Start…

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

W dead guns

Most Unethical Grieving Mother Of The Year

A caring  friend of Chanelle Chavis created a GoFundMe account asking for donations to Chavis’ 3-year-old daughter’s Camber’s funeral after the grieving mom told the friend that her daughter had died in an accident.  Later, moved by the plea, a woman gave  Chavis a $5,000 personal check to pay for Camber’s funeral expenses after Channelle exchanged text messages with her.

Nearly a month later, investigators found that the body of Camber Chavis was still in deep freeze at the funeral home, and no arrangements for burial had been made. Oh—this was no boating accident. The little girl had been murdered by her father.

On October 16, Chanelle Chavis pleaded guilty to obtaining money by false pretenses, a misdemeanor, and received a six month suspended sentence.

These cases of conning people into donating money are basically  all the same, but bit by bit, they make our society less kind, less generous, and less trusting. The law may see this is a minor crime, but there is nothing minor about the damage it does to our society.

Sure, We Don’t Need Guns… Continue reading →

Ethics Alarms Reminder: Don’t Forget About The Links…

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

Homemade-Sausage-Recipes jpg

Those links to other websites on the left are seldom accessed, I suppose because most blogs accumulate them on a quid pro quo basis: link to me, and I’ll link to you. Ethics Alarms doesn’t do that. If the link is there, it’s because I use the site to identify ethics issues or as an information resource. I don’t remove links because a site has removed mine or refuses to link to this one; I don’t take revenge on bloggers who write nasty things about me, either.

This isn’t personal, it’s just ethics.

I’ve been meaning to highlight some of the links for a long time, so readers might be moved to check them out. I assume you are familiar with the news aggregation sites, right, left and center, that I use the most: Mediaite, Politico, Drudge, The Daily Beast, Huffington Post, Google News, Think Progress, memeorandum, and Fark (great for teacher scandals!), as well as the ones that I don’t use, because they are either too biased to trust or have proved untrustworthy, like Breitbart, Buzzfeed, Gawker and The Daily Kos. (I am close to abandoning the Daily Caller as well.) Here are eleven links you should explore; I’ll have other lists of links for you now and then: Continue reading →

Ethics Musings II : The Dark Side Of The Democrats’ Debate

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

outdoor-american-flag

The dark side of the Republican Party is well documented, I’d say, and much of it is on display among the I’ve lost count how many is it now? field of GOP candidates for the Presidency: an affection for theocracy, anti-intellectualism, ideological rigidity in defiance of reality, self-destructive contempt and lack of sympathy for the poor, hypocrisy, estrangement from the evolving culture, an absence of integrity and courage. In other stygian corners lurks outright racism and misogyny.

Based on the display in the Democratic Party’s presidential debate, however, the Democrats’ dark side is scarier by far, in part because it appears party wide. That party, with its roots in the philosophies of Jefferson, Jackson, FDR and Kennedy, is approaching a full embrace of the principles and methods of leftist totalitarianism. Worse yet, the news media appears to be in full alliance with this effort. Worse still, Democrats in the public don’t seem to care. The party called Democratic is increasingly rejecting the principles of democracy, and its public doesn’t care.

During the debate, we witnessed: Continue reading →

Ethics Musings I : The Dark Side Of Personal Injury Lawyers

/ Jack Marshall / 28 Comments

better-call-saul

I’ve been reflecting, since yesterday, on the bizarrely angry and intellectually dishonest protests registered here and on his own blog by trial lawyer Eric Turkewitz regarding the aunt who sued her 12-year-old nephew. His arguments, if you can call them that, consisted of constantly shifting the issue from ethics (what the aunt should have done) to law (what the aunt had a legal right to do), denying the core problem (Why would anyone assume that a child is harmed by dragging him into court, subjecting him to examination in front of strangers, and focusing on him as a wrongdoer and responsible for his aunt’s alleges misery, all mandated by the aunt who supposedly loves him?), and appealing to a dizzying list of rationalization and fallacies. He then made his exit by accusing me, a lawyer, of “knowing nothing about the law” (I made no assertions about the law at all—this is not a legal issue) making everyone stupid, and being a narcissist, a full-bore ad hominem attack ending in an ominous “May God have mercy on your soul!” Why would he act like that?

The reason, I realize, is that my posts challenge the basic belief system of the plaintiff’s bar, which I know very, very well having worked in an executive position and run such diverse programs as the research data base, conventions, sections, litigation groups and more over seven years with the Association of Trial Lawyers of America. Now ATLA is called “The American Association for Justice,” a name chosen purposefully to disguise the fact that it is a plaintiff’s lawyer’s lobby by keeping “trial lawyers” out of the name because it had a negative response in marketing studies. (I kid you not.)

Trial lawyers have done a lot of good and important things and continue to, but the profession is corrupting. There is a lot of money to be made, and ATLA–excuse me, AAJ, is devoted to eliminating any limits on their members’ ability to sue anyone for any amount, no matter what harm it does to the economy, the nation, the cost of health care, the bonds of trust in society, personal liberty, or public respect for the civil justice system. Individually, members of AAJ are among the top donors to the Democratic Party, in part to make sure that they can block all Republican efforts to limit jury awards, spurious lawsuits, and damages that have to be paid by negligent corporations when they destroy lives through shoddy products, conspiracies, and other conduct. The other reason is that Democrats support the redistribution of wealth, and trial lawyers profit by it.

In the matter of keeping corporations accountable, the AAJ is, as they will constantly remind us, on the side of the angels. But like other interest groups (the NRA, the ACLU, NOW, and may more) that stake out  extreme, self-serving and unethical positions in defense of legitimate rights, trial lawyers often feel that they must take the position that every injury and misfortune deserves compensation by someone else. Eventually, they believe it. Justice is taken out of the equation for all but the plaintiffs bar’s clients. Justice means that someone else is always at fault. Continue reading →