crime

Death by Ethics: John Paul Getty III

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

The tragic life of J. Paul Getty III, grandson of the late oil tycoon who long held the title “The World’s Richest Man,” is testimony to the truth that wealth is no match for a family culture devoid of ethics.

Getty III, known to his friends as Paul, died last week at the age of 54. He had been confined to a wheelchair-bound for 30 years, after a drug overdose caused a stroke that left him paralyzed, mute and mostly blind. His father, J. Paul Getty II, who had little contact with his son after divorcing his mother when Paul was a child, refused to help him with any of his inherited billions, declaring that his son had earned his misfortune with his irresponsible ways. In truth, few sons have been given more reason to doubt their self-worth based on their callous treatment by their father figures. Continue reading →

Julian Assange: Not a Hero, Not a Terrorist, Not a Criminal, Just an Asshole

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

I know. Well, sometimes a vulgar word is the most accurate we have.

Our definition of journalism has yet to catch up with the cyber age, and freedom of speech does not distinguish among blogs, newspapers and dissidents. What ensures responsible use of First Amendment rights is ethics, not law. America allows journalists to act as information laundries, taking material that a private citizen was bound not to reveal by law, contract, or professional duty, and to re-define it to the world as what “the public has a right to know,” defined any way the particular journalist finds appealing.

Despite all the fulminating and condemnations by the likes of Mitch McConnell and Newt Gingrich on the Sunday talk shows, the U.S. can’t make Wikileaks founder Julian Assange a terrorist just by calling him one, nor can it fairly declare him a criminal for accepting the product of the unethical and often illegal acts of leakers, and making it public, just like the New York Times has done on many occasions…not under current laws.  Bradley Manning, the U.S. soldier who leaked many of the secret documents, is certainly a criminal. So was Daniel Ellsberg, who, to nobody’s surprise, is cheering Assange on and attacking his critics. . Assange, however, is not a criminal. He has not revealed any information that he accepted in trust while  promising not to reveal it. He is no more a criminal than the New York Times, if the New York Times was published in Hell. Continue reading →

Ethics Lessons From a Missing “at”

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

An embarrassing story from Fairfax,Virginia yields several ethical truths.

A Virginia man facing a fine or worse for not stopping properly behind an unloading school bus got off scot free after it was discovered that he hadn’t broken any law—at least the way the law is printed in the statute books.

The law reads:

“A person is guilty of reckless driving who fails to stop, when approaching from any direction, any school bus which is stopped on any highway, private road or school driveway for the purpose of taking on or discharging children.”

Got that? You break the law by not stopping a school bus that is already stopped. Continue reading →

Easy Call: Wikileaks Is Naive, Unethical, and Dangerous

/ Jack Marshall / 31 Comments

All one has to know is the degree to which nuclear war was averted through diplomatic back-channels and secret communications during the Cuban Missile crisis in 1962 in order to begin to understand how dangerous, stupid and wrong the entire concept of Wikileaks is. The latest dump of secret, near-secret and supposedly secure government messages on a wide range of topics has the  same general effect as a group of small, noisy children running amuck, screaming and banging pots and pans, while adults are trying to address urgent issues of war, commerce, human rights, and terrorism in the same small room. Continue reading →

Be Thankful Tom DeLay Is Going To Jail

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

“As for DeLay, his time will probably come. He has ethical blind spots galore, and is only getting bolder with time. The more the Republicans move to protect “The Hammer,” the more damaging DeLay’s inevitable fall will be to the party. As the old newspaper columnists used to say, “You read it here first!”

I posted that almost exactly six years ago. In the years I have been doing ethics commentary, no figure inspired (or perhaps depressed) me more than Tom DeLay when he was G.O.P. Majority leader in the House. Now he has finally been convicted of the legal violations that his contempt for ethics virtually guaranteed.  From “Too Dumb to be Ethics Dunces,” posted in 2005: Continue reading →

Unethical Quote of the Week: Amazon

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

“…Amazon.com does not support or promote hatred or criminal acts; we do support the right of every individual to make their own purchasing decisions. Amazon.com believes it is censorship not to sell certain titles because we believe their message is objectionable.”

—Amazon.com to the technology blog TechCrunch, in response to the bookseller’s offering the e-book, The Pedophile’s Guide to Love and Pleasure: a Child-lover’s Code of Conduct by Philip R. Greaves II. Continue reading →

The Ethics of Killing Theresa Lewis

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

There were five arguments for not executing murderess Theresa Lewis, who just became the first woman put to death by Virginia in almost a century. Four of the arguments were flawed, but one was not. And one should have been enough to save her life. Continue reading →

DeLay and Blagojevich: Not Vindicated, Not Innocent, and Not Ethical

/ Jack Marshall / Leave a comment

Both Rod Blagojevich and Tom DeLay were taking victory laps this week, Blago because a jury failed to come to an agreement on his trial for selling political favors, DeLay because the Justice Department dropped its prosecution of  him. In the minds of both of these corrupt and shameless politicians, they were indeed vindicated, because both operate under the delusion that if one’s conduct manages to avoid breaking laws to the point where one could be found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, then that conduct is “ethical.” This same delusion has been shared by many other human blights on American society and ethical corrupters in business and politics, including Presidents Richard Nixon, and Bill Clinton, Ken Lay, the executives at Goldman Sachs and AIG, Marion Barry, Maxine Waters, and too many others to mention. It is still a delusion. Continue reading →

Rewarding Wrongdoers to Corrupt Us All

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

It would be wonderful if Steven Slater would go before the cameras and say,

“I want to apologize to Jet Blue and its passengers for my conduct. I was frustrated and emotionally over-wrought, and I wrongly endangered the air travelers, betrayed by co-workers, and embarrassed my employers. I am not a folk hero or a role model. I am ordinary human being who lost control of his emotions, and behaved badly. I am sorry. If my meltdown contributes to a national dialogue that reminds people that we need to be civil patient and kind to one another, then at least something productive will have come out of an incident that I sincerely regret.”

That’s not going to happen. Continue reading →

And You Thought YOUR In-laws Were Bad…

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

Stuart R. Ross, a non-practicing lawyer who, among other dealings, once owned a chunk of the Smurfs franchise, ran out of his own money and began pestering his successful  son-in-law, David S. Blitzer, for investment capital. After Ross blew through the tens of thousands of dollars he got from Blitzer, he demanded more, and Blitzer, a senior managing director of The Blackstone Group, told him that he wasn’t getting any more. So Ross adopted another strategy: he told his daughter’s husband, through repeated e-mails and phone calls, that he would reveal unidentified, career-wrecking secrets about Blitzer if Blitzer didn’t hand over more money—$5.5 million, to be precise. Continue reading →