We haven’t had a good example of an unethical website for a while, but here’s a classic.
Describing itself as the doorway to a “sneaky but ethical” way to make lots of money fast, with no talent or benefit to society while going by a name—domainscalping—that accurately describes its so-called business for the slimy and unethical practice it is, this site wins multiple prizes for forthright sleaze and ethical ignorance. Continue reading
Okay, you Direct TV defenders…if you can stop rolling on the floor with hilarity over people being tasered by police officers and having their food adulterated by redneck waitresses for a second, explain this one to me.
In a current Direct TV commercial about the joys of paying your satellite bill online, a woman enthusiastically chirps, “No more “borrowing” stamps from the office!” Yes, not only does Direct TV assume that everyone steals stamps from their work place, but they think it’s no big deal. If it was anything to be ashamed of, the ad wouldn’t accuse its potential customers of doing it, now would they?
Stealing stamps or anything else of value from your job isn’t cute, and it isn’t right. Who are these people? How did they get this way? This time, they don’t even have the excuse that it’s just for laughs, because this commercial is all business. I think Direct TV’s ads show a company with an ethically corrupt culture, so much so that its management and staff just assumes everyone is just as dishonest and selfish as they are. If they’ll steal stamps, they’ll pad my bill.
So please explain to me, Direct TV fans, why accusing us of stamp stealing is all in good fun. Otherwise, I think I’ll be going back to cable. It is beginning to look like there is something seriously wrong with this company.
Carl Paladino now says he is a big supporter of gay rights, which in his case means that despite the fact that he considers their sexual orientation “invalid,” he still feels that, l ike child molesters and criminals, they deserve basic Constitutional rights…except gay marriage, of course.
The GOP candidate for governor of New York chose a day just barely removed from a series of vicious attacks on gay men, and just a couple of weeks after a gay Rutgers student was humiliated into suicide by a cruel “prank,” to proclaim to a gathering of Hasidic Jews that he does not want children to be “brainwashed into thinking that homosexuality is an equally valid and successful option,” and criticized his opponent, Andrew Cuomo, for marching in the city’s Gay Pride parade, saying,”I didn’t march in the Gay Pride parade this year. My opponent did. And that’s not the example that we should be showing our children and certainly not in our schools.” But Mr. Paladino isn’t homophobic; oh no! He just thinks children should be taught that they shouldn’t hang around with gays, like, you know, lepers, winos, and cannibals. Continue reading
Leona Gage died last week, and there are people who love her and will miss her. But Gage’s obituary would have never been deemed worth of mention in major newspapers had it not been for a series of lies she concocted in 1957 because “she needed the money.” She was Miss USA that year, until contest organizers discovered that, contrary to what she had said, she wasn’t single ( a requirement then); wasn’t waiting “until she was 26” to have a boyfriend (she had been married twice at 14, and already had a child), and wasn’t 21…she was just 18. Continue reading
The upcoming election, among other horrible things, will stand as a landmark of ethical corruption, as parties, news sources and voters will have thoroughly abandoned integrity and weakened their core values by excusing damning behavior from their favored candidates, behavior that, if honestly and objectively evaluated, should disqualify them from any office of trust.
We have already seen disturbing examples of this phenomenon in such embarrassing displays as Rep. Charles Rangel’s birthday celebration, as major Democrats lined up to give tribute to a Congressman who has abandoned multiple ethical duties, including an absolute disgrace for any Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, willful tax evasion. Rather than take a stand for honest government and representatives the public can believe in, partisan supporters are blaming Rangel’s self-made problems on Republican attacks, as if they made Charlie do it all at gunpoint.
The same theme is being echoed by conservatives on talk radio, who are making the case that the ridiculous Christine O’Donnell, who has undeniably misused campaign funds and misrepresented her educational background numerous times and ways, is being criticized for these “errors” because of a “media double-standard.” The only way to interpret such a defense is that the people making it believe all lies, misuse of donations and efforts to mislead the public are excusable if the press has ever ignored them when the transgressor was from the other party. Or they really don’t believe that, but are saying that they do. Either way, they are corrupt. Continue reading
This one is the easiest of calls.
Seth Stambaugh, a student teacher for the 4th and 5th grades at an elementary school in Beaverton, Oregon, was asked by one of the students if he was married. Stambaugh said he was not and, when the student asked why, replied that it would be illegal for him to get married in Oregon because he “would choose to marry another guy.” The student asked if that meant Stambaugh preferred to be with other men, and Stambaugh responded, “Yeah.”
As a result of this exchange, a parent complained, and Stambaugh was fired. Continue reading
The U.S. Supreme Court is deliberating on the issue of whether a District Attorney’s office can be held liable when individual prosecutors commit serious misconduct, on the grounds that the government breached its duty to train its prosecutors and ensure their competence. The case is Connick v. Thompson, and it began when it was discovered that a New Orleans man had been sent to Death Row for 18 years for a crime he hadn’t committed. John Thompson was innocent, and a lab report proving that the blood found at the crime scene belonged to someone else would have proven it. Prosecutors withheld the evidence from the defense attorneys.
When Thompson was freed he was understandably angry, but the options for redress when the criminal justice system ruins your life are severely and unjustly limited. In 1976, the Supreme Court decided in Imbler v. Pachtman that prosecutors have absolute immunity from lawsuits, even when there is genuine, malicious and illegal conduct. The Court acknowledged that its ruling “does leave the genuinely wronged defendant without civil redress against a prosecutor whose malicious or dishonest action deprives him of liberty,” but declared the alternative was worse: making prosecutors timid and fearful of making a mistake that could leave them penniless. The Court suggested that professional discipline would be enough to keep prosecutors honest, but that hasn’t been the case: a USA Today study found that even in egregious cases of prosecutorial misconduct, attorneys who put innocent people in jail almost never had to endure any punishment at all. Thompson sued the District Attorney’s Office on a theory of negligent training, and won 14 million dollars from a sympathetic jury. Now the Supreme Court is deciding whether such suit can stand in light of the ruling in Pachtman.
It should, but the theory behind the lawsuit is a myth, and I suspect that everyone knows it. Continue reading
In Christine O’Donnell’s latest campaign ad in her race for the Delaware U.S. Senate seat, she says,
“I didn’t go to Yale. I didn’t inherit millions like my opponent. I’m you.”
Observations: Continue reading
Dr. James D. Watson, Nobel Prize winner, will always have a place among the highest echelons of scientific achievement, no matter what thoughtless and dangerous things he says. Still, the co-discoverer of the double helix is slowly tarnishing his reputation by a series of gaffes. A few years ago, he opined that there was no way to avoid the conclusion that African-Americans just weren’t as intelligent, on average, as whites: the predictable uproar sent him into retirement. Now, as Watson reaps the well-deserved bounty of career honors in his eighties, he is endorsing the retreat from the standards of medical research ethics originally inspired by the diabolical human experimentation performed on helpless adults and children by nightmarish Nazi researcher, Dr. Josef Mengele. Mengele believed that human beings could be reasonably sacrificed if the benefits to society and humanity generally were great enough, in his estimation, of course. Apparently, so does Watson. Continue reading
