U.S. Society

Ethics Heroes: The Billionaires of “The Giving Pledge”

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

Encouraged by Warren Buffett and Bill Gates, more than 30 U.S. billionaires have pledged to give at least half of their fortunes to charity. Buffett and Gates launched The Giving Pledge project in June. The Giving Pledge does not accept money, or try to steer its participants to any particular cause.  Nor is it a contract. The project asks billionaires to make a moral commitment to give away their wealth to charity.

This is clearly the ideal time for such an effort, when state and local governments are fighting deficits and less wealthy donors are having difficulty meeting prior levels of charity. It is also an eloquent statement by a group of productive, talented, hard-working and patriotic Americans that has been unfairly used too often as a cheap political target by the Obama Administration, Congress and the media.

Nothing bad whatsoever can come from The Giving Pledge. Continue reading →

Gift or Bribe? Barry Bonds’ Generosity to the NABJ

/ Jack Marshall / Leave a comment

Barry Bonds, the retired baseball slugger who used banned or illegal performance enhancing drugs to fuel a late-carer transformation that allowed him to grow from merely great into Superman, breaking every home run record in sight as a result, has adamantly maintained his innocence despite a mountain of circumstantial evidence, positive drug tests, and the verdict of common sense. He has also played the race card when it seemed convenient to his cause. Bonds’ cheating ways have made him rich beyond belief, and his only real problems now are 1) the likelihood of a Federal perjury trial next year in connection with his Grand Jury testimony that he never knowingly took steroids, and 2) the fact that few of the sportswriters who vote for the Hall of Fame seem inclined to enshrine steroid cheats, based on their rejection, so far, of Mark McGwire, whose steroid-assisted single season home run record Bonds broke while he was especially pumped-up.

Both of these problems could conceivably be helped by some positive press opinion, something that Bonds has never cultivated, being inclined to treat all journalists as if they were something he had to wipe off the bottom of his shoe. Thus it raised eyebrows when  it was announced that the charitable foundation created and controlled by Barry Bonds has donated $20,000 to The National Association of Black Journalists. NABJ president Kathy Times told the Associated Press that the money will be used to fund an annual award promoting entrepreneurial spirit. Continue reading →

Congressional Ethics and Race: A Quiz

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

QUESTION ONE: If you are the House Ethics Committee, and you find that investigations of two prominent House members have resulted in convincing evidence of serious wrongdoing and ethics violations, and they both are African-American, the most ethical course is to: Continue reading →

Integrity, Rep. Mark Kirk, and the Citizen’s Duty to Pay Attention

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

The defenders of G.O.P. Rep. Mark Kirk, who has been caught in more than one misrepresentation of his achievements, will argue (as such people always do) that these “mistakes” are simply campaign gotchas that tell voters nothing about what really counts, which is how he will perform when he is elected, as he hopes he will be, a U.S. Senator from Illinois.

In fact, a candidate who lies about his past honors and job history, as Kirk has, cannot be trusted. He continues to show voters that quality, or lack of quality, as this incident, reported in several sources, proves. From The Plum Line: Continue reading →

Charlie Rangel’s Defense and Buster Olney’s Fallacy

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

Charlie Rangel’s defense against the ethics charges against him is, in part this: I’m not the only one, so it’s unfair to punish me.” From the Washington Post:

“He was not the only lawmaker to solicit donations in this manner, his lawyers argue, saying that peers who did the same thing were not punished. With a trial of Rangel by the House ethics committee possible by mid-September, his legal team reached across the Capitol to point a finger at Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who helped raise money for a center named for him at the University of Louisville. Rangel’s team cited similarities with the recently deceased Sen. Robert C. Byrd (D-W.Va.) and with former Republican senators Trent Lott (Miss.) and Jesse Helms (N.C.).”

OK, a question: what’s the matter with that argument? Continue reading →

Ethics Tip For Police Being Videoed: Smile!

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

Every now and then one learns about a practice that seems so obviously wrong that it is difficult to believe it could really occur in America. The police’s broad power to confiscate property used in the commission of a crime stunned me when I first read about it in law school. Municipal government use of the power of eminent domain to take private property and turn it over to corporate interests for profit-making development, as in the Kelo case, was another example. During the health care reform debate, I learned that our elected representatives not only didn’t bother to read major legislation, they thought there was nothing wrong with not reading it. I’m still scratching my head over that one.

The increasingly common phenomenon of police arresting citizens for recording arrests and other police activity on video is the most recent example of conduct that is so wrong it is hard to believe it happens—but it does. Continue reading →

The Ground Zero Mosque and “The Niggardly Principles”

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments

Fine, reasonable, ethical commentators, not to mention Mayor Bloomberg, have argued that the moderate Muslim group seeking to build an Islamic center and mosque within a hand grenade’s throw of Ground Zero is blameless, persecuted, and as pure as the driven snow in its ethics.

They are ignoring the Second Niggardly Principle, which is understandable since I just formulated the Niggardly Principles One and Two today, after carefully reflecting upon what it could be about this matter that has led so many wise people astray.

Several years ago, a white Washington D.C. government worker, the Shirley Sherrod of his time, was fired for using the word “niggardly” in the work place, which was found to be racially insensitive to those whose vocabulary was so limited they didn’t know that the word had nothing to do with race. This incident embarrassed the D.C. government, which is used to being embarrassed, and inflamed pedants. Eventually the worker was reinstated, and the First Niggardly Principle was born, which is as follows: Continue reading →

Ethics Dunces: Charlie Rangel’s Birthday Celebrants

/ Jack Marshall / Leave a comment

From “The Hill”:

“Democratic leaders and major party donors plan to hold a lavish 80th birthday gala for Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.) at The Plaza Hotel in Manhattan next month, despite 13 ethics charges pending against the veteran lawmaker.”

Apparently New York’s U.S. Senators Charles Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand plan to attend, as well as New York Gov. David Paterson and gubernatorial candidate Andrew Cuomo—Democrats all.

Here is the ethical problem—and it is hardly rocket science. When a public figure’s misdeeds are more prominent in the public’s view than his or her lifetime accomplishments, it is impossible to celebrate the latter without appearing to endorse, support, or other wise fail to show sufficient disapproval of the latter. Continue reading →

The Ethics Of The Ground Zero Mosque

/ Jack Marshall / 25 Comments

The proposed Ground Zero mosque should be a straightforward ethics issue, but it is not. Now it is bound up in a thoroughly confusing  debate that confounds and blurs law, ethical values, history, rights, and human nature.  Everyone is right, and everyone is wrong.

Yes, it’s an Ethics Train Wreck, all right. This one is so bad I hesitated to write about it—ethics train wrecks trap commentators too—in the vain hope that it would somehow resolve itself with minimal harm. That is obviously not in the cards, however; not when the Anti-Defamation League weighs in on the side of religious intolerance, thus forfeiting its integrity and warping its mission. The wreck is still claiming victims, and there is no end in sight. Continue reading →

John Avlon’s “Ten Congressmen Who Should Be Fired”: Too Short, By Far

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

John Avlon, a senior political correspondent at The Daily Beast and author of  the book Wingnuts: How the Lunatic Fringe is Hijacking America, has posted his list of “Ten Congressmen Who Should Be Fired.” Though Avlon’s definition of “wingnut” is too often “conservative,” and picking the ten most embarrassing members of Congress is like choosing the ten most offensive reality TV stars, it’s a reasonably good list, if far too short and only the beginning. The members on it seem to split into four main categories: outrageously uncivil, clearly incompetent, corrupt, and too outspokenly conservative for Avlon, who regards all Tea Party sympathizers, for example, as dangerous “wingnuts.”

Here’s the list, with highlights of Avlon’s reasons: Continue reading →