duty

Ethics Quiz: The Aborted No-Hitter

/ Jack Marshall / 40 Comments

Friday night, Miami pitcher Adam Conley  was pitching a no-hitter against the Milwaukee Brewers with two outs in the eighth inning, meaning that he was just four outs away. A no-hitter—no hits, no runs, for an entire game—places a pitcher name in the  Hall of Fame. It makes him an instant part of sports history. In today’s hyper-celebrity culture, it means interviews and endorsements.

Moreover, the Marlins needed something to make their fans feel better. Dee Gordon, the team’s star second baseman, had just tested positive for steroids and was suspended for 80 games. Nonetheless, Marlins manager Don Mattingly lifted Conley because he had exceeded his pitch count. Though baseball paid little attention to the statistic for 70 years, today teams carefully monitor how many pitches a hurler throws, both to anticipate ineffectiveness, and to guard against injury.

In Conley’s case, he had never thrown more than a hundred pitches in a game, and had topped out at 116. To Mattingly and Marlins pitching coach Juan Nieves, that meant that even on the verge of immortality, Conley had to be removed. Conley was angry, though he said all the right things after the game. Still, knowing the alleged risk to his arm and career, he wanted to try to finish his masterpiece. (The Marlins blew the no-hitter and the shutout in the 9th, though still managed to win 5-3.)

Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day:

Was removing Conley “for his own good” when he wanted to have the chance at a no-hitter fair?

Continue reading →

Post-Debate Ethics, The Final Question: Will The GOP Be Unethical If It Rejects Trump?

/ Jack Marshall / 86 Comments

Republican_Party

When I first planned this post, I had seen only one column that argued that the GOP could not fairly refuse to nominate Donald Trump if he comes to the convention having won the most primary contests and delegates. Since then, I have read many more, as well as statements from various Republican leaders to that effect.

All of them are very, very wrong.

In the law, we look at this as a “who is the client?” question. To whom does the Republican Party owe its primary loyalties? What is the party’s purpose, and how does it best accomplish it? The answers to these question dictate its actions regarding Donald Trump’s fate.

Neither the election process nor the nominating process involve direct democracy. If the only purpose was to determine which candidate the citizens who consider themselves Republicans want to have on the ticket, a national primary would do the trick, and the party would barely be anything but a bystander. That is not the objective, however. The objective is to identify the most qualified and competent individual who represents the values of the Republican Party, and who has, in the judgment of professionals whose job is to discern such things, the best chance of winning, and to present him (or her) to the American public for their judgment, in order to maximize the likelihood of a fit and admirable citizen undertaking the awesome responsibility of leading the United States of America, and ensuring the success and survival of the nation, as well as the vital principles it represents to the world.

In the pursuit of this objective, the Republican Party has many stakeholders..itself, to begin with.  As a public institution, the party’s survival depends on the public perception that it is performing its duty competently and with the dignity and transparency such a role requires. Another group of stakeholders are its citizen members, who joined the party, contribute to it, volunteer their time, and give the benefit of many doubts to the party’s candidates in the polling booth. These citizens expect the party not to embarrass them, at a minimum, and ideally to actually accomplish some of the goals and policy measures the party’s principles support.

Non-Republicans are also stakeholders. If the parties do not do perform their duties with seriousness, diligence and skill, then the citizens will be faced with poor choices and unsatisfactory alternatives  on election day.

Ultimately, the Republican Party, like the Democratic Party, must regard its most important stakeholder as the United States of America. The President is both the symbol of the nation abroad and the embodiment of its hopes, ideals, history and continuity domestically. If the parties choose their candidates irresponsibly, then the nation itself is at risk. And as history has shown again and again, the world needs a vibrant and thriving United States of America. The planet itself has a stake in how well the Republican Party does its duty.

In the priority of Republican Party stakeholders, or “clients,” the candidates themselves are at the very bottom of the list. They exist to serve the party’s needs and responsibilities, not the other way around. True, they invest their time, money and passion in the task of proving themselves worthy of nomination, and they have a right to expect that the process they are engaged in will be consistent, reasonable and fair. They must understand, however, that the process, in the end, is not about them, but about fulfilling the responsibility of finding a worthy candidate for the office of President of the United States.

In a process that was designed to identify worthy candidates, Donald Trump has proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that he is unworthy. He had, in fact, proven that long, long ago, and the GOP’s leaders were foolish to allow him to run for the party’s nomination. It provides me some rueful amusement to read Senator Lindsay Graham’s comments yesterday that the GOP should have kicked him out of the party. Why, yes, Senator, I pointed that out more than six months ago, and it was obvious then.

Since that time, Trump has provided myriad justifications for declaring him persona non grata. The first time he engaged in name-calling and vulgarity, he should have been given an ultimatum. His personal attack on Megyn Kelly was sufficient to remove him; his conduct regarding the handicapped reporter, towards John McCain and prisoners of war; his attacks on George W. Bush and Mitt Romney, threatening to sue Ted Cruz—on and on, you know the litany. The party has an obligation not to present as its standard bearer a candidate who does not embrace and cannot be trusted to support its values, ideals and principles, and Trump has made it inarguable that he does not.

Moreover, the evidence of his lack of fitness to be President accumulates daily, and at an accelerating rate: Continue reading →

Post-Debate Ethics, Part I (of 4): The New York Times And The Biased Media’s Disrespect For Mitt Romney

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments
"Boy, what a jerk, warning the public against a power-mad, narcissist blow-hard before they make him President...."

“Boy, what a jerk, warning the public against a power-mad, narcissist blow-hard before they make him President….”

Since the last GOP debate, several ethics issues have emerged, for those inclined to see them:

1. The New York Times and the Media’s Anti-Romney Bias

The biased news media helped sink Mitt Romney’s chances four years ago, and now, perhaps by habit, it can’t stop itself from bashing him even for doing something indisputably good. Though Mitt did a thoroughly statesmanlike, honest, accurate and unprecedented job eviscerating any argument for supporting Donald Trump, his own party’s front-runner for the nomination, most of the media couldn’t bring themselves to give him credit. Democratic operative Matt Lauer, on the “Today Show,” asked Romney if his direct attack was “betrayal,” as Trump portrayed it. (Hint, Matt: any time Trump stakes out an ethics position, you can assume it’s either self-serving or stupid.). The theory behind Matt’s Mistake is that Romney asked and received Trump’s endorsement in 2008, so he owed Trump the same in 2016. Let me explain to you Matt, the concepts of patriotism and statesmanship, as well as truth-telling, and how loyalty works.

You see, Matt, Mitt Romney’s loyalties in this matter, in order of priority, are individual, party, and country. If returning Trump’s courtesy had no negative impact on the Republican Party or the future of our nation, then yes, he would be ethically obligated to return Trump’s courtesy. That is not the situation, however, as I’m sure you know, but want to pretend otherwise in order to try to blunt Romney’s message and ensure that the  Democratic nominee, either the unqualified Bernie Sanders or the corrupt Hillary Clinton, has to face the weakest opponent possible, now that Ben Carson has finally withdrawn.

When Romney sought and got Trump’s endorsement, Trump didn’t predicate it on a future endorsement when Donald ran, because nobody in their right mind, even Trump, would have seriously suggested that Trump would or could mount as credible campaign. Mitt was seeking the endorsement of a businessman, a reality TV figure with high visibility, celebrity and a potential donor, and that’s all he was doing. That doesn’t obligate Romney to return the favor. Lauer apparently thinks Mitt is in “The Godfather” : accept the favor from the Don(ald), and you must do whatever you are asked at a later date, even if it means shooting someone. No, you are not obligated to do anything. What you asked before was a favor; what is being asked of you now is a wrong.

For nominating Trump will wreck the Republican party. It will dissolve its values, embarrass its members, soil its reputation and legacy, and when Trump turns out to be the new Silvio Berlusconi, or a modern day Huey Long, or an American Hitler, or, as I suspect, being an optimist, just a more destructive version of Evan Meacham, the car salesman turned Arizona Governor who became the first U.S. governor to simultaneously face removal from office through impeachment, a scheduled recall election, and a felony indictment, or, in the best case scenario, a national version of Jesse Ventura. Under any of these scenarios, however, the GOP will be crippled, accountable and ultimately doomed, and that’s just what journalists like Lauer want in their heart of hearts. What they don’t seem to realize is that there is a real risk that Trump could win.

Romney owes his first loyalty in this matter to his party, and his highest to his fellow citizens. His speech was not a betrayal of either of these, but an ethical act to its core.

Even worse than Lauer was the New York Times editors, who wrote yet another embarrassing editorial, one of many they have authored in the past 12 months or so as the paper has almost completely shed its mantle as the exemplar of U.S. journalism. Rather than an objective and fair editorial praising Romney’s courageous and well-aimed broadside at a juggernaut, the Times used the opportunity to play partisan politics while expanding and re-using old cheap shots at Romney: Continue reading →

Ethics Review Of “Supreme Court Vacancy Theater”

/ Jack Marshall / 104 Comments

Court vacancy

The short review would be “Yecchh.”

The reason that the earlier Ethics Alarms post about the death of Justice Scalia expressed the wish that President Obama on his own declare that he would defer the almost certainly futile appointment of a successor to the tender care of the next President was precisely because it was obvious that any other course was just going to create more ugly partisan name-calling and hypocrisy, accomplishing nothing positive and wasting a lot of energy and time. I also knew that this most divisive of POTUS’s would no more do that than he would deliver his next speech in a duck voice. Thus we have the theater, with people who should know better acting like the Republican Senate’s announcement that it would not be voting on President Obama’s nominee, should he make one, is some  kind of gross breach of duty and ethics, and people who don’t know better acting as if being one Justice short is some kind of Armageddon. Neither is true.

Nor is there any reasonably similar set of circumstances and conditions that makes the GOP’s entirely political decision, and Obama’s entirely political decision to test it, some kind of breach of precedent. There is no precedent—not with these factors in play:

A Democratic President with both Houses controlled by the Republicans

An ideologically and evenly divided Court, with the new Justice potentially having a momentous and nation-changing effect on the determination of many looming cases

An unusually partisan and ideological President who has proven unwilling and unable to seek legitimate input from the opposing party, and who, in fact, has been personally and bitterly insulting toward it

A rebellion against the “establishment” in both parties, from the extreme reaches of both parties, on the grounds that neither is extreme or combative enough

A lame duck, not especially popular President and an approaching national election that is currently being molded by unpredictable personalities and events, and is likely to be hotly contested..

The Supreme Court unusually central to the government of the country.

The vacancy on the Court being created by the death of one of the Court’s most influential, ideological and powerful members.

A degree of political division in the public not experienced since the Civil War.

These are all material factors, made more material in some cases because of the other factors. Thus accusations that the Republican have engaged in some kind of grand, historical crime against democracy is, to the extent the accusers believe it, crap, and to the extent that they don’t, ignorant. Continue reading →

Unethical Quote Of The Week: The Huffington Post, Which Is Having A Really Unethical Week

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

KKK assestance

“The photo has gone viral this weekend as netizens praise the officer’s extraordinary show of professionalism and grace under such trying circumstances.”

–—The Huffington Post, commenting on the photo above, showing black police officer Leroy Smith giving a feeble white supremacist assistance during the Ku Klux Klan rally held at the South Carolina Statehouse over the weekend.

Does the Huffington Post have any idea what professionalism is? Ethical conduct? Increasingly, I have my doubts, and this is just the latest example.

We already know the average “netizen” doesn’t know ethics from shinola, but the Huffington Post is a news and culture commentary site. One would think a basic comprehension of such concepts as duty, fairness, justice, responsibility and ethics would be essential. Well, let me rephrase that: they are obviously essential. One would think the Huffington Post would know that without them, its analysis of pretty much anything is worthless.

Look, you ethics dolts: Smith was doing his job, that’s all. The fact that he personally may have objected to the beliefs and words of the protesters is completely irrelevant to his professional obligations. He must treat all professionals the same. To do otherwise would un-professional, un-ethical, and wrong. Dominique Mosbergen is  apparently  of the opinion that the normal, professional thing to do is to refuse to help people whom you don’t like, agree with, or whose views offend you. Wait—isn’t this what the jerks who refuse to sell cakes to gay couples do? Somehow I don’t think Dominique agrees with those anti-gay marriage zealots or that she feels to just treat such customers as human beings would constitute an “extraordinary show of professionalism and grace.” Why does she think a black cop helping a distressed racist like he would a similarly needy  NAACP member because they are both citizens and as a public servant he is duty-bound to treat them both exactly the same is an “extraordinary show of professionalism and grace,” then?

It is because she is incompetent and ignorant. It is because she doesn’t comprehend what professionalism is. It is because to her, “White Racist Lives Don’t Matter,” so she is just bowled over when an African American acts without employing her biases.

Leroy Smith behaved like any professional would, and should. Nothing more, nothing less. Most cops do their jobs, and do them professionally. There is nothing newsworthy or extraordinary  about the photo, except to people who believe that the primary motivating factor for most people is hate.

_____________________

Pointer: Fred

Bergdahl Desertion Ethics

/ Jack Marshall / 42 Comments

BoweSo Bowe Bergdahl is being tried as a deserter! Fancy that—and yet Susan Rice, the President’s National Security Advisor, told the nation, as the President was trying to pretend his decision to trade terrorists for the disturbed American POW wasn’t the cynical effort to overshadow the then raging VA scandal and to tamp down veteran groups’ rage that it was, that Bergdahl  “…served the United States with honor and distinction…”

Either Rice knew this wasn’t true—and if she were competent in her job, she would have to, wouldn’t she?—and was lying to the American public, or she didn’t know whether it was true or not, but asserted that it was true anyway, which is also lying to the American people. She is, as we already know, willing to do this—lie. And her punishment from the President, who promised transparency, for such a high profile and embarrassing lie? Nothing. What does this tell us? It tells us that Barack Obama doesn’t put a very high priority on being truthful with the public that elected him..

You know, I don’t object to making a prisoner trade to free an American soldier, even an awful one like Bergdahl, if that is the reason why it is done. I can accept it if our leaders level with the public, as in: “Sgt. Bergdahl is far from a model soldier, and may even be facing charges. But he is an American citizen, and we do not abandon our own. Even a flawed American soldier is more precious than five terrorists.” These leaders, however, don’t level, because they fear that if they did, the full disgrace of their incompetence would be known. Just as Obama doesn’t hold Rice accountable, the news media and the President’s party don’t hold him accountable for this putrid, contemptuous treatment of the American people, and Democrats allow incidents like this to rot their values from the inside out.

That’s the revolting culture that the charges against Bergdahl confirm, for those not completely rotted. Continue reading →

Transgender Ethics: Epic Trailblazer Malpractice In New Hampshire

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments
Ex-N.H. state legislator, Stacy Laughton, a.k.a Barry Laughton.

Ex-N.H. state legislator Stacie Laughton, a.k.a  felon Barry Laughton.

Trailblazers have an ethical obligation when they presume to break a social or occupational barrier to a marginalized group’s participation and equal treatment. Simply put, their duty is to make the bias that has created the barrier and necessitated the “trail” look ignorant, cruel, foolish and unfair. A trailblazer does not have to be a shining star, though it helps, but must be capable of at least doing a solid, average, generally acceptable job., even in the grudging judgment of bigots.

This is because a trailblazer who does a poor job or displays character traits that are objectively inadequate for a role model, which a trailblazer inevitably becomes, risks adding to the barrier he or she just breached for those who follow behind them. The ethical requirement for trailblazers is the same as the traditional edict for doctors “First do no harm.” Being a trailblazer, however, is not easy, and since failure is catastrophic for the group a trailblazer represents, there is a duty not to attempt such a high-risk, high-profile cultural role unless the trailblazer is first, reasonably convinced that he or she the resources of talent, ability, fortitude, character and courage to succeed, and second, willing to accept and overcome the added stress of relentless attention and criticism.

There have been excellent trailblazers, cultural heroes all. Jackie Robinson, the first black Major League baseball player to break the color barrier is the template, but there are many other successes: Justice Thurgood Marshall, John F. Kennedy, the first Catholic President of the U.S., Amelia Earhart, Diane Crump, the first female jockey, the late Ed Brooke, the first black U.S. Senator since reconstruction, and too many more to mention. There have also been some miserable failures. The worst trailblazer was probably Shannon Faulkner, who fought in the courts for two years to force The Citadel to accept female cadets, then, after she was victorious, showed up fat and unprepared, and washed out in just one week as millions of dubious vets said, “See? What did we tell you?” Then there was Carol Moseley Braun, the charismatic, promising African-American Democrat whon Illinois voters elected as the nation’s first black female Senator, only to turn out to be thoroughly corrupt.

More recently, we have seen other trailblazers fall short, like Michael Sam, the first openly gay player drafted by the NFL.  Is there a celebrity gay marriage that has not ended in a quick divorce? Most have been failures, reinforcing the belief that gays are promiscuous and unsuited for a real marriage. Most vividly of all in the realm of trailblazer malpractice, we are reminded of the disheartening and tragic examples of Barack Obama, and Eric Holder every day.

Still, in the annals of epic trailblazer fiascoes, it would be hard to top the story of Stacie Laughton, New Hampshire’s first openly transgender state legislator, who was elected in 2012 as one of three House members for Ward 4 in Nashua. Continue reading →

“It’s Unethical To Be A Weenie,” Part II: Our Craven, Terrorism-Validating Theater Chains

/ Jack Marshall / 23 Comments
Or maybe not...

Or maybe not…

[Part I is here]

Regal Cinemas, Cinemark, Cineplex, Bow Tie Cinemas, Carmike and AMC Theatres will not show “The Interview” because the North Korea-based hackers that breached Sony Pictures Entertainment e-mail security threatened movie theaters and moviegoers who attend screenings of the satire. More theater circuits are expected to follow, because terrorism works especially well against weenies.

Leading the way for this disgusting weenieism display were first, Sony itself, which reportedly toned down the film in response to earlier threats from the group, and then the stars of the comedy, James Franco and Seth Rogan. They both cancelled all their publicity appearances and are evidently hiding under their beds, caving to the dictates of unknown critics who are almost certainly not in the country. Oooh, but they’re so scary!

First they stole emails from Sony executives to retaliate for the comedy’s story line, which involves an assassination attempt on the life of North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un by two morons. Then the group issued a warning referencing 9-11 and warning Americans, to stay away from theaters showing “The Interview”:

“We will clearly show it to you at the very time and places The Interview be shown, including the premiere, how bitter fate those who seek fun in terror should be doomed to. Soon all the world will see what an awful movie Sony Pictures Entertainment has made. The world will be full of fear. Remember the 11th of September 2001. We recommend you to keep yourself distant from the places at that time. (If your house is nearby, you’d better leave.) Whatever comes in the coming days is called by the greed of Sony Pictures Entertainment. All the world will denounce the SONY.”

Or “All your base are belong to us.“

Continue reading →

For You, Dad.

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

Jack Marshall Sr Army portraitI lost my dad, Jack Marshall, Sr., five years ago today, and for some reason the loss feels especially sharp right now. This has been another miserable birthday, but not so miserable as that one, and I found myself once again revisiting my father’s favorite poem, which was a personnel credo for him and which has often served me well in hard times too. It is linked in the “Inspiration” section on the  Ethics Alarms home page, as well as quoted in my post here on the day my father was buried in Arlington National Cemetery.

Nonetheless, I am going to post Rudyard Kipling’s “If” once again. My father’s favorite line was…

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
    And treat those two impostors just the same;   
That was Dad to the core. He never looked back, never cursed his luck, never thought too highly of himself (or anyone else), always believed in tomorrow, and that no victory was final, and no defeat was forever. And I know he was right, though it doesn’t often feel like it. So this is for you, Dad. Thanks for everything.

“If”

If you can keep your head when all about you

Are losing theirs, and blaming it on you,

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,

But make allowance for their doubting too;

If you can wait, and not be tired by waiting,

Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,

Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,

And yet, don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream – and not make dreams your master;

If you can think – and not make thoughts your aim;

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster

And treat those two imposters just the same;

If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken

Twisted by knaves, to make a trap for fools,

Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,

And stoop, and build ’em up, with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings

And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,

And lose, and start again at your beginnings

And never breathe a word about your loss;

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew

To serve your turn, long after they are gone,

And so hold on when there is nothing in you

Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on!”

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,

Or walk with Kings – nor lose the common touch,

If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,

If all men count with you, but none too much;

If you can fill the unforgiving minute

With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,

Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,

And—which is more—

You’ll be a Man, my son!

 

Why The Winooski Bacon Controversy Matters

/ Jack Marshall / 31 Comments

bacon signLast week, Sneakers Bistro and Cafe in Winooski, Vermont removed a sign reading “Yield for Sneakers Bacon” from a garden at the Winooski Rotary after a woman who described herself as “a vegan and a member of a Muslim household” called the sign offensive in an online post.

“Given the large number of Muslim families in Winooski, as well as many others who do not eat pork for a variety of reasons, it seems unnecessary for this insensitive business sign to be at the city’s main crosswalk,” she wrote. Sneakers, obeying the growing U.S. cultural mandate that any individual has a veto over words and conduct that he or she finds offensive regardless of 1) whether it is offensive to anyone else and 2) whether the alleged offense is certifiably bats, apologized, and took the sign down.

I am happy to support that this decision did not play well, even in ultra-liberal Vermont, and under a barrage of criticism on the web and elsewhere, the Sneakers’ management posted the following message on its Facebook page, thus making their situation worse:

“We are here to serve people BREAKFAST, not politics. We removed the sign that was located on public property as a gesture of respect for our diverse community. There were also concerns raised about safety. Removing it was not a difficult decision. We still love bacon. We still love eggs. Please have the political conversation elsewhere.”

That idiotic statement was the disaster anyone conscious should have been able to predict it would be. And let’s be thankful this is still true. Tomorrow, Sneakers’ response may be standard operation procedure, even if ISIS doesn’t take over the country while the President is breaking par. Continue reading →