ethics

The Unethical Deficit Debate, a Cause for Despair

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

Our future, thanks to Washington, D.C.

If the bi-partisan dishonesty and unethical conduct surrounding the budget showdown last week didn’t cause you to despair, then you weren’t paying attention:

  • At a time when the federal deficit threatens the long-term (and not all that long, either) solvency of the U.S., risking quality of life, world leadership and security while placing us under the thumb of China, a Machiavellian adversary, both parties—and the President— opted for ideological point-scoring and demagoguery rather than serious explication of the issues.  Irresponsible cowards.
  • The government was brought to the brink of a shutdown over a pathetic, meaningless, 39 billion dollars of cuts that Democrats called “draconian” and Republicans and Obama trumpeted as the “largest budget cuts in U.S. history”. They were draconian only if you think like Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who argued that Republicans were heartless to put “cowboy poetry” on the cutting block, and if, as is increasingly looking to be the case,  the Democrats are willing to let the country stay on the road to bankruptcy as long as it also leads them to power. The cuts were the “largest” only in their inflated figures: the budget was cut close to 50% after World War II. Liars and frauds.
  • Even if it were truly”the largest,” the heralded 39 billion dollars cut represented an infinitesimal dent in the overall budget and will have no appreciable effect on the deficit at all. It took a near shutdown to accomplish that. Easy Quiz: what are the chances of our current leaders displaying the political courage to make the substantial, genuine, painful cuts that all serious analysts agree are imperative to stave off financial ruin? Liars and cowards.
  • After all of the drama, after all the condemnation and hype, after “draconian” and “largest ever,” and after the President joined the charade, the no-nonsense Congressional Budget Office announced that by its calculations, the so-called cut was mostly fiction. It boiled down to only $352 million, less than 1% of a 39 billion that was inadequate to begin with. Incompetents.
  • The Democrats chuckled into their sleeves; the Republicans cried that they had been deceived, as if legislators don’t have the resources to find out what the money in the budget they are charged with approving actually pays for. Liars, incompetents and fools.

For me, the low point was President Obama’s speech at George Washington University, announcing his engagement—finally!—in the deficit-cutting debate while resorting that old Democrat stand-by, class warfare; blaming the Bush tax cuts, irresponsible but only one of many contributors to the deficit crisis; and  pledging to cut expenses by ending waste, fraud and abuse while simultaneously stating that the deficit couldn’t be cut by addressing waste, fraud and abuse.  It wasn’t any of those cynical moments that caused me to lose hope, however. It was the President’s insistence that the deficit cutting measures must not interfere with his highest priorities…such as building “new roads.” Continue reading →

Global Warming Advocates Flunk Ethics, and Credibility…Again

/ Jack Marshall / 27 Comments

Never mind!

The evidence for global warming is pretty overwhelming, though still possessing some holes, and the likelihood is that much of the change is man-made. That’s about as far as the scientific evidence goes, however, without getting into serious controversy. The dire climate chance projections continue to be questionable at best, which poses problems for environmentalists who want to use climate change as a wedge to shut down industry, and alarmists who are frightened out of their wits by science they really don’t understand. Rather than demonstrate that the science is unbiased and credible by acknowledging the uncertainty, the global warming community, including elected officials with agendas, radical anti-industrialists, various research, political and advocacy groups and a depressing number of scientists who know better—and Al Gore…can’t forget Al!—have resorted to outrageous scare tactics and apocalyptic “projections.” Continue reading →

Facebook, Truth Trap: The Saga of the Belly Dancing Invalid

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

Just imagine how she could dance if she weren't disabled!

Facebook is beginning to reveal itself as a kind of truth trap for the unethical. It is infinitely more difficult to live a lie when you give the world a window into your life via social media. The choice may be between undiscovered fraud protected by social isolation, and blogging candor resulting in unpleasant justice. Indeed, not being on Facebook may create suspicions that some individuals are hiding misconduct. And they just might be, for if they become active on Facebook, the Truth Trap is waiting.

Take the Saga of the Belly Dancing Invalid.

Dorothy McGurk was stripped of a divorce settlement she had forced out of her ex-husband three years ago, when a court ruled that her Facebook entries proved she wasn’t unable to work as she had claimed. Continue reading →

Ethics Hero, Non-Human Division: The Guardian Deer of Forest Lawn

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

Bambi's mother would understand.

Animal ethics are not a major topic here, in part because there is continuing scientific controversy over whether animals are capable of ethical impulses. The pros seem to have the upper hand over the cons, however, due to observations of altruistic conduct exhibited by primates in the wild and other evidence. How a wild deer, at last report standing guard over a widowed goose and her brood at Forest Lawn Cemetery in Buffalo, NY, fits into the debate is for others to decide, but it’s an inspiring tale.

A mother goose has lost her mate (geese bond for life, it seems) and now must tend to her nest in the cemetery, which is home to many varieties of wildlife.  She spends the day sheltering her eggs inside an empty urn. The job of her deceased mate was to guard the home, and discourage predators, which, as you know if you have ever had a run-in with a goose (as I have), he would have been very capable of doing. Without a guardian, the prospects for the future goslings are not good

An adult deer, however, has come to the rescue and had assumed the role of protector. Continue reading →

Comment of the Day: “Finis: The New Black Panthers Voter Intimidation Affair”

/ Jack Marshall / Leave a comment

Michael, who also just made a “Comment of the Day”-worthy point regarding the recent post about schools banning homemade lunches for students (you can read it here), makes an important point about reports that dismiss allegations of government misconduct as “unsupported.” There is an obvious parallel with the public’s misinterpretation of verdicts finding the likes of O.J. Simpson (who did kill his wife and Ron Goldman) and Barry Bonds (who did lie to a Federal Grand Jury) “innocent” because the government prosecutors did not meet their burden of proof “beyond a reasonable doubt.” Here is Michael’s Comment of the Day on the post, Finis: The New Black Panthers Voter Intimidation Affair: Continue reading →

Ethics Hero: Arizona Governor Jan Brewer

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

There is hope for Arizona yet...

Earlier, I wrote about a bill passed by the Arizona legislature that would broadly allow religious practices and beliefs to trump professional obligations, ethics codes and discipline. The bill, SB 1288, directed in part:

A. Government shall not deny, suspend or revoke a professional or occupational license, certificate or registration based on a person’s exercise of religion.

B. Government shall not deny, suspend or revoke a professional or occupational license, certificate or registration based on a person’s refusal to affirm a statement that is contrary to the person’s sincerely held moral or religious beliefs, regardless of whether those beliefs are specifically espoused by a recognized church or religious body…

C. A person’s exercise of religion is not unprofessional conduct.

It was widely assumed, including by me, that Republican governor Jan Brewer would sign this stunningly awful bill into a law which would allow any practice that could be called “religious” to be immune from community, cultural and professional norms of right and wrong unless they were explicitly illegal. She did not. She vetoed it, an act of responsible leadership and political courage.

You can read her veto letter here.

The “Baby Emma” Saga Revisited: The Core Issue

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

Didnt King Solomon have a case like this once?

When the mother of the child an unmarried father co-created with her decides that she doesn’t want to/ can’t raise the child and doesn’t trust the father to raise her, is it ethical to put said child up for adoption without notifying or consulting the father?

That is the ethical issue the “Baby Emma” incident, first discussed here in an earlier post, ultimately raises. It is a question that I did not discuss in that post, focusing instead on the father’s conduct and his current plight, as self-described on his “Baby Emma” website. I made three ethical assessments, each of which are self-evident:

1. The whole situation would have probably not occurred if John Wyatt and Baby Emma’s mother had been married before conceiving a child.

2. Both of them were irresponsible to plan on having a child together without formalizing a mutual commitment to form a family and raise the child together…that apparently archaic institution known as “marriage.”

3. The mother betrayed John’s trust, deceived him, and treated him unfairly.

I also suggested that, absent a marriage, it is fair and reasonable that the mother of a newborn be able to put the child up for adoption if she deems that course better for the child than being raised by the child’s father. I did not say that was the law, or even that I would vigorously oppose a law that directed otherwise, as Virginia’s law does. I only stated that my own belief is that incentives for irresponsible parenthood are unwise. I have been asked why I focused on the issue I did, rather than the other ethical issues raised by the controversy. It was because the issue was brought to me with the presumption that John Wyatt, the father, was a blameless and unequivocal victim in the matter. My ethics alarms sounded: he has significant ethical accountability for the mess, and I explained why.

As to the answer to question above, I can only say this: it depends. The conduct of Baby Emma’s mother is mysterious and extreme. Did she panic? Did she have a mental break? Why would a lifetime friend and partner of a man conceive a child, pretend to plan to raise her with him, and then secretly negotiate to have the baby adopted and taken out of state?

I see many scenarios that could be behind her decision, which fall into three distinct categories: ethical, unethical, and too close to call: Continue reading →

Here’s An Idea: How About Making Teachers Actually Read Their Code of Ethics?

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

Read the Code, Miss Umbridge!

I don’t believe that the outrageous stories I read almost every day about incompetent, abusive, irresponsible teachers necessarily prove that there is a higher percentage of teachers who got their credentials straight from Hell today than in past generations, though I strongly suspect that is the case. In the days before the internet, horror stories stayed local, and seldom even made the paper. Thus we didn’t hear about the kind of student-terrorizing episodes that have turned up over the last few days, such as….

…..The fourth grade teacher whose brilliant idea to explain the Civil War was to have a slave auction in class, with the white students bidding on the non-white students.

…..The kindergarten teacher who reportedly told students to encircle a classmate, call him a pig and make pig noises because the boy was “messy.” Continue reading →

Consenting To Be Beaten

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

Bought and paid for.

Ethics Alarms has frequently used the analogy of a drunk paid by cruel bar patrons to dance for their entertainment as an example of how using money to persuade a desperate, impaired or foolish individual to allow himself to endure humiliation or harm is still unethical and cruel, despite the supposed “consent” of the victim. PETA’s attempt to pay Nadya Suleman, a.k.a. “Octomom” was recently cited in this context in the post about painting homes as billboards. Now, from St. Petersburg, Florida comes an even more horrible example. Shefights.net, a locally operated website that sells videos (for up to $900) of scantily clad or semi-nude women beating up men, has been paying homeless men, drug addicts and street alcoholics $50 for submitting to  12-minute videotaped beatings by attractive females. Continue reading →

Just So You Know The Legal Profession Is Trying…

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

The Massachusetts bar has suspended a lawyer for six months for running an advertisement on Craigslist offering to write  papers and essays for students to turn in as their own. The state Board of Bar Overseers of the state Supreme Judicial Court issued a memorandum April 1 announcing that lawyer Damian R. Bonazzoli was suspended from practice.  He also lost his job lost his job with the state Appeals Court.

Good. Continue reading →