It is rare that an ethics issue breaks down neatly into two well-defined camps, but that is the what has happened regarding an October episode in which Southwest airline flight attendants kicked a mother and her unusually loud two-year old off a flight. Continue reading
ethics
Robert Bowman: Aspiring Lawyer, Ethics Martyr
Robert Bowman, according to a panel of New York judges, does not have the requisite good character to be admitted to the practice of law in New York. The reason for the panel’s finding is superficially logical: he owes nearly a half-million dollars in student loans. This is, says the panel, per se proof of irresponsible and negligent financial management, making him an unacceptable risk for any client. The panel is almost certainly wrong. Continue reading
A New and Ethical Website: The Give Blog
Ethics Alarms, like its progenitor, The Ethics Scoreboard, often identifies unethical websites, of which there are far too many. It isn’t often that an unusually ethical website appears, but the Tax Prof Blog found an excellent one. Illinois Law Professor Suja Thomas and her husband Scott Bahr have created a site called The Give Blog: Conscious Living and Giving. Continue reading
“Scroogenomics”: Clueless About Holiday Ethics
I had decided to write about the new book “Scroogenomics: Why you shouldn’t buy presents for the holidays”early yesterday. I should have assumed that our current Scrooge-in-Chief, George Will, would have the same idea. He did, and greeted his readers with typically sour tidings as he heartily endorsed this commercially clever and ethically fatuous book. The brain-child of economist Joel Waldfogel, “Scroogenomics” argues that holiday gift-giving makes no economic or social sense, and is a net drag on everyone. Will’s quote from it is as revealing as any:
Gifts that people buy for other people are usually poorly matched to the recipients’ preferences. What the recipients would willingly pay for the gifts is usually less than the givers paid. The measure of the inefficiency of allocating value by gift-giving is the difference between the yield of satisfaction per dollar spent on gifts and the yield per dollar spent on the recipients’ own purchases.
All of which means that Waldfogel (and Will) are hopelessly confused about the social and ethical value of gift-giving, which has little to do with the ratio of “the yield of satisfaction per dollar spent.” Continue reading
Landrieu’s Pay-off: Ethical and Playing by the Rules
[Like you, I am thoroughly tired of seeing Claude Rains’ Capt. Renault quoted in these situations, but sometimes his famous “Casablanca” line is too apt to resist. This is such a time.]
Pundits are “shocked—shocked!” that Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu traded her vote to allow debate on the health care bill for $100 million dollars of earmarked funds for Medicaid subsidies in her state. Fox demagogue/clown Glenn Beck called Landrieu a prostitute and a hooker. Time Magazine columnist Mark Halperin accompanied his condemnation of Landrieu with a disgusting photoshopped picture of the Senator sporting the infamous semen-hair gel ‘do from the raunchy comedy, “What About Mary?” The deal was widely called a bribe by indignant bloggers, angry conservatives, and even some liberals. Continue reading
The Ethics of Dithering
At some point, delaying an important leadership decision stops being resposnible, and begins being unethical.
The White House put out word today that President Obama’s decision regarding troop levels in Afghanistan is on the verge of being revealed. When it is, a few things are certain. If his decision is to increase troop levels to the degree requested by the Pentagon, Obama’s pacifist Left supporters will be furious. If it is to withhold more troops and prepare for U.S, withdrawal, supporters of an aggressive war policy on the Right will go on the attack. If it is anything in between, neither of these camps will be happy.
It is also certain that nobody will be able to tell if what the President has decided is the “right” decision. Continue reading
Lobbyist Ventriloquism and the Abysmal State of Congressional Ethics
When Washington, D.C. attorney Robert Trout delivered his closing argument in the trial of former Rep. William Jefferson (now known as “Inmate CB476881”) for, among other things, accepting a large cash bribe that was later found in his office freezer, he told the jury that the prosecution was hypocritical and unfair. After all, he said, “If seeking political help was a crime, you could lock up half of metropolitan Washington, D.C.” Jefferson’s actions may have been unethical, and they were certainly a mistake, but really now: isn’t this just what all Congressmen do? Jefferson, Trout argued, just got a little bit carried away.
Jefferson was convicted, so there is some distance left for our faith in our elected representatives to fall before it hits rock bottom. The argument was still ethically disturbing in two respects. First of all, Trout’s pitch amounted to a jury nullification plea, a defense in which a jury is encouraged to ignore the law, and that is unethical lawyering.
Second, Trout may well have been right. Continue reading
The Case of the Exaggerating Juror
From Bucks Count Pennsylvania comes a cautionary tale with an important lesson for drama queens, hypochondriacs, and people who just have a tendency toward hyperbole:
Exaggerating is the same as lying. Continue reading
The Ethics of Bigotry, Part III:Tom Yawkey’s Red Sox Racism, and How Not to Prove It
Tom Yawkey owned the Boston Red Sox for four decades and his wife Jean owned them for one more; it is accurate to say that he was the most influential individual in the storied team’s existence. Yawkey bought the team in the mid-Thirties, after it had suffered through one of the worse stretches of awful play on record, sparked by an earlier owner’s fire sale of its best players, including Babe Ruth. Yawkey ran the Red Sox with an open checkbook and a stated objective of giving the city of Boston the best championship money could buy. Soon the once-pathetic team was fielding all-time greats like Jimmy Foxx, Joe Cronin, Lefty Grove, and a brash young phenom named Ted Williams. By the time Yawkey died in 1976, the Red Sox had one of the largest, most loyal and fanatic fan bases in sports, and the team was entrenched in New England culture. Boston remains properly grateful, and the re-naming of the street outside Fenway Park “Yawkey Way” is no perfunctory tribute. (The names of Yawkey and his wife Jean are spelled out, vertically, in Morse Code on the famous hand-operated scoreboard on Fenway Park’s left field wall.
The Red Sox came close, but they never won that World Championship under Yawkey. One of the primary reasons was that the Yawkey way was racist. 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 