accountability

Is Corporate Philanthropy Unethical? No, But It’s Important to Ask the Question

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

I gather not very many readers sample the links on Ethics Alarms, which is a shame. They contain a lot of different approaches to ethical issues, from many philosophical approaches. Well, heck…I use them , which is really what they are here for. One of the more original thinkers represented among the various sites is Jason Christopher Cockrell, author of The Worst-Case Scenario. It appears that he has abandoned blogging, which is a shame, but his last post, at the end of 2010, was full of surprises. In it, he offered an argument against corporate charity, something I have never heard anyone criticize on any level, except to say that there isn’t enough of it.

The theory behind corporate philanthropy is that it is a win-win for everyone involved. The corporation enhances its public reputation and visibility, improving employee moral and making investors proud to hold stock. Society benefits from substantial contributions that support everything from cancer research to Sesame Street to regional theater. It is hard to imagine what the charitable landscape would look like without corporate philanthropy, but the thought of eliminating it is sufficient to give any professional fundraiser hives. I know—both I and my wife were development officers for many years. Continue reading →

Ethics Heroes: The U.S. Supreme Court

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

To be more accurate, the heroic component in this instance is the liberal wing of SCOTUS ( Justices Sotomayor, Kagan, Ginsberg, and Breyer) plus the swing vote, Justice Kennedy, who wrote the majority opinion in Brown v. Plata.  The decision upheld a court order requiring California to release a staggering 46, 000 inmates of its prisons, more than a fourth of the those sentenced there. The majority concurred with the lower court’s assessment that California prisons were so obscenely over-crowed that conditions amount to a human rights violation and a breach of the constitutional prohibition on “cruel and unusual punishment.”

Some Supreme Court decisions come down to ethics as much as law, and this was certainly one of those times. At issue from a legal standpoint was  whether federal judges had the power to order the release of state prisoners as a necessary means of curing a constitutional violation. But the brilliant legal minds on the conservative side of the Court’s divide had no problem answering that question in the negative, and persuasively too.  The dilemma is that California’s least sympathetic citizens, its residents of the state’s penal institutions, are being kept in conditions that violate their constitutional rights, and despite many years of knowing about the problem, the state hasn’t found a way to rectify it. Continue reading →

The Judgement Day Leader’s Cowardly Ethics Failure

/ Jack Marshall / 28 Comments

"It is all my fault."

After the catastrophic miscalculation of Pickett’s Charge led to the slaughter of his soldiers and the loss of the pivotal Battle of Gettysburg, Confederate General Robert E. Lee   met the bloody survivors returning from the field of fire, telling them, one by one, “It is all my fault!” To Pickett, whose division was all but wiped out, he said, “Upon my shoulders rests the blame.”

I am no admirer of Robert E. Lee, but this was his finest moment as a leader, and an example for all leaders who are followed in faith and meet disappointment or worse.  I wrote two days ago that Harold Camping, the evangelical broadcaster who proclaimed with absolute, 100%  certainty that his calculations foretelling the end of the world on May 21 were correct, had better be prepared to be held accountable when we were all still here on May 22. He wasn’t. From Reuters:

” With no sign of Judgment Day arriving as he had forecast, the 89-year-old California evangelical broadcaster and former civil engineer behind the pronouncement seemed to have gone silent on Saturday. Family Radio, the Christian stations network headed by Harold Camping which had spread his message of an approaching doomsday, was playing recorded church music, devotionals and life advice unrelated to the apocalypse.” Continue reading →

Is Harold Camping Ready For His May 22 Integrity Test?

/ Jack Marshall / 19 Comments

"Never mind!" will not do it, Harold.

In response to a New York Magazine interviewer’s question about how he could be so sure the world was going to end on May21 (that’s tomorrow, folks!), Harold Camping, the leader of the imminent rapture movement,  said this:

“God has given sooo much information in the Bible about this, and so many proofs, and so many signs, that we know it is absolutely going to happen without any question at all. There’s nothing in the Bible that God has ever prophesied–there’s many things that he prophesied would happen and they always have happened–but there’s nothing in the Bible that holds a candle to the amount of information to this tremendous truth of the end of the world. I would be absolutely in rebellion against God if I thought anything other than it is absolutely going to happen without any question.”

The Rapture’s not happening on May 21st, but on May 22nd this good and pious man will have a big ethical decision to make. Continue reading →

The Indescribable Leroy Fick

/ Jack Marshall / 37 Comments

Fick, n.: "One who shamelessly and openly violates cultural norms of fairness and decency out of selfish motives"

If Ethics Alarms hadn’t awarded Donald Trump the Jerk of the Year Award, would Leroy Fick deserve it instead?

If Keith Olbermann was still giving out his “Worst Person ” titles, would Leroy Fick retire the category?

What is the right term for someone as shamelessly self-centered, and greedy as Leroy Fick?  “Bounder” is too dignified. “Creep” is too mild. “Bum’ is too sympathic. “Asshole’ is too generic. I’ve been searching all night; there isn’t a word in existence that does him justice.

Leroy Fick is a 59-year-old Auburn, Michigan man who won $2 million in a state lottery last June. Nevertheless, he is still living on food stamps, because eligibility for food stamps is based on gross income,  and  lottery winnings  don’t count as income. As long as Fick’s gross income stays below the eligibility requirement for food stamps, he can legally qualify for them, and despite the fact that  he knows they are only meant to help support low-income families, and despite the fact that they are paid for by taxpayers, and despite the fact that Michigan, like most states, is swimming in red ink, Leroy Fick intends to keep letting the state help feed him just as if he was destitute.

“If you’re going to try to make me feel bad, you’re not going to do it,” Fick told WNEM-TV in Saginaw on Monday. Naturally, Fick has a lawyer whose task it is to excuse his client’s astoundingly irresponsible conduct. He says that Fick “has done nothing wrong. It’s the system that needs (to be) changed.” Continue reading →

Newt Gingrich: Ethics Victim…Ethics Miscreant…Walking, Talking Ethics Lesson

/ Jack Marshall / 25 Comments

The Ethics Lesson

I’m glad Newt Gingrich is in the presidential race, however foolishly and futilely. He is perhaps the perfect illustration of how a potential political leader’s private personal conduct is not only relevant to assessing his fitness to lead, but predictive of it. What makes Newt especially useful in this regard is that he is a Republican, and all the Democrats who are going to be sneering at his candidacy will have to square their attacks on his character with their indignant claims in 1998 that Bill Clinton’s adultery, sexual harassment and lies were irrelevant to his leadership—and they weren’t truly private or personal.  Similarly, Newt will be helpful to some of my ethically-addled trial lawyer friends who have argued that John Edwards is still a trustworthy lawyer, despite his betrayals of his dying wife, his family, his supporters and his party.

Of course private conduct is relevant to judging a leader, especially when private conduct shows an individual to be dishonest, disloyal, cowardly, ruthless, selfish and cruel—like Newt. Cheating on two wives and leaving both of them when they were battling health crises isn’t a mistake, or a coincidence, or a misunderstanding; it is a pattern, and a symptom. You can’t trust Newt. You can’t rely on Newt. You can’t believe Newt. Ask his ex-wives, and eventually, I am quite certain, his current one.

Today conservative talk radio is abuzz with Gingrich’s frenzied efforts to sooth the conservative faithful after he attacked Rep. Paul Ryan’s budget reforms over the weekend. What??? You mean Newt Gingrich stabbed a political ally and  fellow party stalwart in the back without warning? Who could have seen that coming? Oh, only everybody: You can’t trust Newt. You can’t rely on Newt. You can’t believe Newt. Ask his ex-wives. Continue reading →

The Washington Post, Protecting a Young Villain

/ Jack Marshall / 36 Comments

"Even if she is a "bad seed", we have a duty to make sure nobody knows little Rhoda did those horrible things..."

The Washington Post has revisited the epically tragic story of Fairfax, Virginia teacher Sean Lanigan, who in 2010 was falsely and maliciously accused of sexual molestation by a vengeful 12-year old girl, launching him into a Kafkaesque sequence of incompetent law enforcement and bureaucratic callousness. Though he was acquitted of all charges, his life, career, personal finances and reputation remain shattered. As for the female student at  Centre Ridge Elementary School who set out to destroy Lanigan because he had reprimanded her, the Post does not reveal her name “because she is a minor.”

This is warped ethics, warped journalism, and warped logic. Every day one can read news stories about named elementary, middle school and high school students who have been disciplined for various non-criminal offenses, minor or otherwise. In the case of criminal arrests involving minors, there is a legitimate legal reason for withholding the name of an accused juvenile, for youthful offenses are often expunged or sealed, provided there is a conviction and a sentence served. This story is different, however. No criminal charges have been made, though what the girl did to the teacher was certainly worthy of one. A jury ‘s verdict has shown, and the news media has confirmed, that a girl used the devastating social stigma of  child molestation to settle a personal vendetta. I don’t care if she is thirteen or twenty-two; there have to be consequences for such vicious conduct, and being identified by name is just a starting point for her accountability. Continue reading →

How Unethical Is This Feature Story? Let Us Count The Ways:

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

Next amusing list from the Houston Press: "Ten Hottest Serial Killers"!

The feature, courtesy of the Houston Press, and I’m not making this up, is headlined  “The Ten Hottest Women on the Texas Sex Offenders List”, which is sure to make another list somewhere, “The Ten Most Offensive Ideas for a Feature Story.” The author, Richard Connelly, introduced his list of child-molesting hotties by writing,

“We combed through 15 of the biggest counties in Texas and came up with the ten hottest women in the database. Warning: In some cases, we picked out the best of a series of mugshots. Alternative choices were starkly different. So click on each link before you send any marriage proposals.”

What was wrong with this article, besides the obvious drawbacks that it wasn’t funny or satirical, and that the women weren’t hot (but then, who takes a hot mug shot)?

Let’s tally them up: Continue reading →

Bin Laden Aftermath Ethics: Deadly Expediency and Incompetence at the Top

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

Psst! Joe! SHUT UP! You're killing people!

Secretary of Defense William Gates told a group of Marines at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina that the Navy SEALs who took out Osama bin Laden were concerned about their safety and that of their families. And why wouldn’t they be? After all, the aftermath of Osama bin Laden’s death  exposed President Obama’s inner circle, not for the first time, as inept and reckless in the responsibilities and priorities of leadership.

Mere days after the successful raid on bin Laden’s compound, Vice President Biden spontaneously announced the name of one of the men in charge of the SEALs team at a fundraiser in Washington, saying, Continue reading →

Ethics Hero: Washington Post Columnist Carolyn Hax

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

I’m breaking some precedent here: I don’t usually pick Ethics Heroes based upon writing alone, and I don’t usually reprint long sections from someone else’s column. But relationship advice columnist Carolyn Hax has long displayed a brilliant feel for ethical analysis, and expresses it sharply and entertainingly to the great benefit of her readers. Good general readership ethical analysis is all too rare, and she deserves accolades.

Today she provided as clear and as deft a lesson in how responsibility, honesty, fairness, bias and accountability work as I can imagine, while chiding a man who wants to rescue a younger woman from the relationship he didn’t have the guts to pursue herself. It shows her at her best, and is impeccable ethics as well. Brava!

Here is the inquiry and Hax’s response: Continue reading →