It wasn’t George Bush, the Iraq War, John McCain or even the economy that made the GOP a minority party. It was arrogance, corruption and sliminess. The smug Machiavellian tactics of Tom DeLay; the just-look-the-other-way tolerance for the Mark Foleys and the Duke Cunninghams; the hypocrisy of Bill Frist and Ralph Reed; the widespread affection for crooked lobbyists like Jack Abramoff; the Bizarro World ethics of Dick Cheney and Alberto Gonzalez…the bottom line was that you just couldn’t trust these people not to lie, sell favors, abuse their power, or dive head first into conflicts of interest. Continue reading
conflicts of interest
Michael Chertoff’s Ethical Dilemma
Is it unethical to promote something in which you have a financial or other personal interest even if you would have advocated it anyway? When one is a respected and credentialed former public official, this situation can pose a real dilemma. You sincerely believe it is critical to take certain action; indeed you believed in the importance of this action before you had a stake in it. Continue reading
The 2009 Ethics Alarms Awards, Part 1: The Worst
Welcome to the first annual Ethics Alarms Awards, recognizing the best and worst of ethics in 2009! These are the Worst; the Best is yet to come. Continue reading
“The Good Wife” and Bad Ethics
Julianna Margulies’ latest attempt to find another hit series after “ER” is a lawyer drama, “The Good Wife.” It tells of the travails and trials of a former litigator who returns to law firm practice after her prosecutor husband, played by “Mr. Big” Chris Noth, is sent to the slammer in a scandal that also involved marital infidelity. As lawyer dramas go, “The Good Wife” is fairly good about not distorting the legal ethics rules. It still slips up, however, as this week’s episode showed. Continue reading
Ethics Heroes: “Pharmed Out”
A group of 100 medical ethicists, physicians and others calling themselves Pharmed Out have written the head of the National Institutes of Health and requested that the NIH fund studies examining the effect financial and industrial conflicts of interest have on medical research. Continue reading
Ethics Quote of the Week
“People seem to listen to you more when you’ve got a bagful of cash.” Thomas J. Donohue, president of The U.S. Chamber of Commerce. From a story in The New York Times, noted by City Ethics.
Throughout his career, Donohue has demonstrated a talent for distilling fact, wisdom, irony and humor into plain-speaking quips. My all-time favorite: “Sometimes I don’t know what I think until I hear what I have to say.”
Ethics Alarms 