conflicts of interest

“Blue Bloods” Ethics: The Good Lie?

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

Tom Selleck as NYC Chief of Police Frank Reagan

Tom Selleck’s CBS drama “Blue Bloods,” chronicling the exploits of  the Reagans, an improbable fictional New York City family that dominates NYC’s law enforcement, featured an excellent example of a necessary lie last night, in which utilitarian principles would hold that the lie,  a rather serious and extensive one—many interlocking lies, really—was the most ethical option available.

The situation arose because the Chief of Police (Frank Reagan, played by Selleck) learned that his police officer son, Jamie Reagan, had rescued a child from an explosion, and the press and city were clamoring to know who the hero was. (Nobody saw the rescue, which is a contrived detail, but necessary to set up the ethical dilemma.) But Jamie was also working undercover in a serious and dangerous operation, having infiltrated an organized crime family. (Why was a uniformed cop allowed to stay on the street while leading a double life? Seems reckless to me, but Father Chief knows best.) To protect the undercover operation and his son, Frank Reagan decides on an elaborate deception, persuading his son’s partner, who was on the scene of the rescue, to take the credit and even accept a commendation in a public ceremony.

Lying to the public and the press to such an extent is almost always inexcusable, but protecting an anti-crime effort in the public interest, as well as the imperiled officer involved in it,  is a rare case in which the balance tips away from the truth. The “Blue Bloods” solution was the best one available given the situation and the law enforcement priorities.  But… Continue reading →

Economists Start Getting Serious About Ethics

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

Charles Fergusen’s documentary about the 2008 financial collapse, “Inside Job”, chronicled the maze of deceit, conflicts of interest, greed, recklessness and self-serving maneuvers across multiple professions and sectors of the economy that led to the meltdown. Among the professions that were implicated in the account was that of economists, who in many cases advised Congress and others regarding economic policies without disclosing their own ties to special interests and various players in the drama. The debacle was a severe blow to the credibility of economists as a group and economics as a discipline. Many have since called for the profession to put in place conflicts of interest rules to guide practitioners and to build public trust.

For my part, I was surprised to learn that there was not such a code already in place. As a lawyer, I am  spoiled—the legal profession, as with judges, doctors, researchers, psychiatrists, accountants, legislators and government workers, has recognized the need for formal ethics guidelines for a very long time. The number of fields without ethics codes continues to amaze me, although one of those professions is…ethics.

Economics, however, is making strides. At its annual meeting in Chicago last week, the American Economic Association  issued  principles for disclosure of potential conflicts of interest and conflicts related to published academic papers. Here they are: Continue reading →

The Third Annual Ethics Alarms Awards: The Worst of Ethics 2011 (Part 1)

/ Jack Marshall / 26 Comments

Yes, it was Joe Paterno's year, all right.

Welcome to the Third  Annual Ethics Alarms Awards, recognizing the Best and Worst of ethics in 2011!

This is the first installment of the Worst; Part 2 is here. And the Best is here. 

2011 prompted more than 1000 posts, and even then I barely scratched the surface of all the ethical dilemmas and unethical conduct swirling around us. If you have other choices for the various distinctions here and in the subsequent Awards posts, please make them known.

Here are my selections:

Unethical Community of the Year:  Huachuca City, Arizona. Leading the way among American communities that believe, in their hysteria, that former sex offenders who have served their sentences are nonetheless fair game for persecution and the denial of basic rights as citizens and human beings, Huachuca County passed an ordinance that bans registered sex offenders from the use of all public facilities, including parks, school and libraries.  Runner-up: Obion County, Tennessee. Last year, Ethics Alarms gave the county runner-up status as “Unethical Community of the Year” for sending its volunteer fire department to watch a man’s house burn down because he had failed to pay a $75.00 fee. In 2011, it did it again. I swear: if Obion County hasn’t come up with a better system and this happens again in 2012, Obion County will get the title no matter what some other unethical community does.

Most Warped Ethical Values: The Penn State students who protested the firing of football coach Joe Paterno, because, you know, he was such a great football coach that a little thing like allowing a predatory child molester to run amuck on campus shouldn’t be blown all out of proportion. Runner-up: Ron Paul supporters.

Unethical Website of the Year: Lovely-Faces, the anti-Facebook stunt pulled by Paolo Cirio, a media artist, and Alessandro Ludovico, media critic and editor-in- chief of Neural magazine, to show how inadequate Facebook’s privacy controls were. To do it, they stole 250,000 Facebook member profiles and organized them into a new dating site—without the members’ permission. The site embodied “the worst of ethical thinking: taking the identities of others for their own purposes (a Golden Rule breach), using other human beings to advance their own agenda (a Kantian no-no) and asserting that their ends justify abusing 250,000 Facebook users, which is irresponsible utilitarianism.” Continue reading →

Thank you, Donald Trump

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

I can't bear to post another picture of Donald Trump, so I'm using this cute Jack Russell puppy's photo instead. I would also vote for the puppy for President before I would vote for Donald Trump.

I had been having misgivings about annointing Donald Trump the Ethics Alarms Jerk of the Year last spring, since so many strong contenders emerged as the year went on—Rev. Terry Jones, Alec Baldwin, Newt, Leroy Fick, of course, and others. Trump, however, took matters in hand, and locked up his award with a flourish by announcing yesterday that he had forsaken the Republican Party and was seriously considering a third party run  for the presidency. For reaffirming my original assessment, thank-you, Donald Trump.  For everything else, curses are more appropriate.

The man is totally without shame. Two weeks ago, he was fully prepared to be the moderator of a GOP candidates debate…a blatant and outrageous conflict of interest for anyone who had the faintest glimmer of a presidential bid still in what passes for his mind. When all but the equally shameless Newt Gingrich and the desperate Rick Santorum declined to be Trump’s props, he withdrew as moderator, and now this. Is he running for President out of spite? I suppose that would be more admirable than his earlier fake pass at a run, which was evidently designed to pump up ratings for his reality show. This public buffoon is willing to distort the democratic process and throw a monkey wrench into an extraordinarily important national election on a whim, a lark, or a hissy fit. Continue reading →

Love Your Lawyer? Bad Idea. Love Your Client? Even Worse.

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

This is all your fault, Arnie!

A Connecticut lawyer under fire for commencing a lawyer-client relationship with a woman with whom he was romantically involved made the novel argument that it is good to be in love with your client.  This indicates a profound misunderstanding of human nature and the nature of a lawyer’s duties.

Almost ten years ago, the American Bar Association recommended that state bars include a direct prohibition against lawyers having sexual relations with their clients, and the majority of the states did so. As I have mentioned before, it’s a dumb rule, too broad and too narrow simultaneously, a classic example of how some kinds of unethical conduct do not lend themselves to precise rule-making.  The main problem with the no-sex rules is that they are unnecessary. The legal ethics rules are replete with exhortations to maintain objectivity, independent judgment and to avoid conflicts of interest. Common sense suggests that it is irresponsible to confuse one relationship by adding another; professional standards dictate that combining a professional relationship of independence and with romantic relationships is wrong.  As the D.C. Bar’s Rules of Professional Conduct point out in its comments to Rule 1.7, Conflicts of Interest: Continue reading →

George Will Is Conflicted, and Telling Us That He Is Doesn’t Cure It

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

Is George Will's wife making him pull his punches?

Conservative columnist George Will has a conflict of interest problem not of his making. A regular, and superior, commentator on politics and current affairs in op-ed pages and on television, Will’s objectivity and independent judgment is apparently compromised by the fact that his wife is an advisor to the presidential campaign of Texas governor Rick Perry

Initially, Will took the position that his wife’s business and his were independent, and that his integrity should be presumed based on his long and distinguished record as a columnist. But the Washington Post ombudsman, among others, declared that Will’s readers needed to be able to make their own judgment about his objectivity, and lately Will has been issuing formal disclaimers whenever he wades into Republican presidential politics. Most recently he did this while slamming New Gingrich—accurately and with precision—for taking a cheap shot at Mitt Romney regarding Romney’s work at Bain Capital.  Will wrote: Continue reading →

Ethics Dunces: The Nevada Ethics Commission, Which is Pretty Depressing.

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

An X-Ray of Caren Jenkin's head, ethics sector

Here at last may be the answer to the riddle of why state ethics commissions have so little effect on the persistent problem of unethical government.

The people who make up the membership of such commissions may not know the first thing about ethics. Take Nevada, for instance:

To celebrate the 35th anniversary of the Nevada Ethics Commission, its executive director, Caren Jenkins, organized a party at a Carson City restaurant.  She invited current and former commissioners and staff, and also the state’s top elected officials, whose conduct is reviewed by the commission, which can fine them substantially or even seek their removal from office and prosecution for violating state ethics laws.
The invitation included a request for $33 to pay for the event.

“It never even crossed my mind that this would be seen as questionable,” said Jenkins. Never crossed her mind. eh? The event has elected officials whom the commission has to objectively oversee socializing with their state-appointed watchdogs. The Ethics Commission chair solicited money from officials who must depend on the commission for discretionary ethics calls. Jenkins has apparently never heard of appearance of impropriety, conflicts of interest, or interference with independent judgment. The Chair of the Nevada Ethics Commission has ethics alarms about as well-maintained as those of Charlie Rangel or Marion Barry. And since none of her fellow members bothered to raise any objections over her plan, their ethics alarms are in similar disrepair.

Unbelievable.

Or all too believable, come to think of it.

The Washington Redskins and the Nepotism Trap

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

Bobby Kennedy was lucky. Kyle Shanahan isn't.

No leadership error embodies the appearance of impropriety more completely than nepotism, and, for good measure, it also creates an inherent conflict of interest and undermines fairness and integrity. Yet people continue to argue that it is not inherently unethical, and leaders and managers in all fields continue to walk into the nepotism trap. The fact that it doesn’t always snap shut is not an argument in its favor, for this is just moral luck; letting your kid play with matches in bed won’t necessarily burn the house down or kill him, but it’s still irresponsible.

Washington Redskins fans now have a painful lesson in nepotism’s drawbacks to guide their own decisions. As has been a routine event about now in the pro football season since hapless owner Dan Snyder became responsible for the team’s personnel, the Redskins season is imploding, and the head coach is on the griddle. This season that coach is Mike Shanahan, and the problem is his offense. The Skins were shut out Sunday, 23-0, and appear to have no quarterback, no offensive line, and no clue.

The team’s offensive coordinator? Kyle Shanahan, the head coach’s son. Now what? Continue reading →

Ethics Quiz: Should the State Department Be Buying and Distributing the President’s Books?

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

It's a State Department...and a nifty literary agent too!

It’s a little early for another Ethics Quiz, but this one is tailor-made.

The Washington Times reported today that The State Department has bought more than $70,000 worth of  books authored by President Obama. Hillary’s folks have been sending out copies as Christmas gifts, and stocking  libraries around the world with “Dreams from My Father.”  For example, the  U.S. Embassy in Egypt spent $28,636 in August 2009 for copies of the best-selling 1995 memoir, six weeks after it had placed another order for the same book for more than $9,000. At the same time, the U.S. Embassy in South Korea spent more than  $6,000 for its copies of “Dreams from My Father.” All of this comes from federal purchasing records.

The Times points out that the previous  State Departments resisted the impulse to buy books by former Presidents George W. Bush or Bill Clinton.

Are you ready for your Ethics Quiz? It’s a multiple choice:

For the State Department to spend $70,000 on its boss’s book is…. Continue reading →

Now THIS Is A Conflict of Interest!

/ Jack Marshall / Leave a comment

The news is that negotiations between the Boston Red Sox and the Chicago Cubs over what the Cubs will pay the Sox as compensation for nabbing their tarnished boy genius General Manager Theo Epstein are not going smoothly, and no wonder. The situation as it stands is a conflict of interest classic, with no obvious solution. You don’t have to know a thing about baseball to love it: this was designed by the Ethics Gods as an exam question.

Consider: Continue reading →