fairness

Orc Attack! The Unethical GOP Campaign Smear With the Built-In Punishment

/ Jack Marshall / 21 Comments

“Citizens of Maine, I give you your next state Senator! Her campaign slogan: “Better an Orc than an idiot!”

In Maine, Republicans have attacked a state Senate candidate with an unfair and stunningly silly accusation devised by fools for consumption by the gullible, ignorant and confused. Fortunately, such an attack comes with its own punishment, for it constitutes a smoking gun that proves beyond a reasonable doubt that the Maine Republican Party is not only run by dolts, but dolts who never made it into the 21st Century.

Imagine: in a campaign mailing this week, Maine Republicans accused Democratic state Senate candidate Colleen Lachowicz of making “crude, vicious and violent comments” and living in a fantasy world because she plays the fantasy role-playing game World of Warcraft, and comments in online forums dedicated to the popular online pastime.”We need a senator who lives in our world, not Colleen’s world,” the mailing says. Continue reading →

Ethics Quiz: Conspiracy Theories and the Disrespect Follies

/ Jack Marshall / 27 Comments

One of the problems with the hateful, vicious, hyper-partisan politics that now grips the nation is that its most severe sufferers, inevitably the so-called “bases” of the two political parties and their most vocal advocates, end up making themselves look like fools because of it. Their fervor drives out rationality, and by refusing to assign decent and reasonable levels of  respect to their political opponents, they devalue their own credibility, sometimes to the vanishing point. They may not really be fools (though some of them are), but in a real sense, they have been driven insane…by hate, by lack of proportion, and a respect deficit that banishes both fairness and responsible conduct.

Crazy Accusation A: Republicans/Conservatives… Continue reading →

Ethics Heroes: President Obama and Mitt Romney

/ Jack Marshall / 52 Comments

Congratulations to President Obama and Mitt Romney for being respectful, civil, dignified, good-natured, articulate and presidential in tonight’s debate.

I was proud of both of them.

Thanks. We needed that.

Look! Now Obama Has a Suck-Up Speech To Explain…

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

The Daily Caller found a previously uncirculated Barack Obama speech from 2007, and the conservative media has been giving it the “47%” treatment. No wonder. The speech is uncommonly ugly, with the future President channeling Rev. Wright and Kanye West, encouraging black anger and racial hate. Needless to say, he does not sound like a leader of “all the people” here.

I am on record as believing that such partisan audience speeches should be taken for what they are, and thus with several grains of salt, but never mind: the standard, a different one, has already been decreed by the mainstream news media, which treated Mitt Romney’s unscripted remarks about the government-dependent “47%” as more significant than the collapse of Obama’s foreign policy, the negligent death of our Ambassador, and a protracted White House cover-up of a terrorist attack. If they want to aspire to any fairness and even-handedness at all, it should devote a similar amount of attention and outrage to Obama’s remarks to black clergy, which were, in my view, far worse, because they were designed to exploit racial fears and divisiveness. They are also, like Romney’s comments, misleading and unfair.

I could argue that it is more reasonable to focus on Obama’s speech, because it was made in public, and presumably was fair game for criticism at the time. Why didn’t the reporters who witnessed it raise any alarms then? Wouldn’t such a racially divisive speech during the campaign (for the nomination) be at least as newsworthy in 2008 as the “47%” line by Romney 2012? Of course not—because the media was trying to elect Obama then, and it is trying to defeat Romney now.

Don’t be silly. Continue reading →

9 Tips For Ethical Debate Watching

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

The hype and predictions about tomorrow night’s first debate between Mitt Romney and President Obama are already unbearable. Yet the debates will be worth watching, and could do this revolting campaign a lot of good, if we can discipline ourselves to watch it ethically. This is harder than it sounds.

1. The most important aspect to ethical debate watching is resolving to be fair. That means don’t do your own “spin”: force yourself to be equally critical of both candidates. There are no villains in this election, much as it has been framed that way by the two parties. Neither has a nefarious objective; both are dedicated public servants and loyal Americans. If you don’t believe that, you probably shouldn’t watch the debates at all.

2. Look for honesty, and be grateful for it. I will give points to any candidate that admits a mistake, gives credit to his opponent, state that he doesn’t have all the answers, acknowledge that there is merit in some of what the other candidate suggests.

3. Look for dishonesty, and be critical of it. Are his answers evasive? Does he quote false statistics? Is he making promises he can’t keep, or has no control over whether he keeps them or not? Is he trying to mislead the ignorant and gullible in the audience? Do you trust him?

4. Watch for signs of character, good and bad. The debate isn’t scripted, which means that we have a rare chance to see the human beings (maybe) rather than the facades. Are they arrogant? Nervous? Disrespectful? Rude? Dispassionate? Impulsive? Cocky? Are they respectful? Fair? Reasonable?  Gracious?

5. Ignore the practiced zingers and the style points. Don’t be overly impressed with recitations of facts, names and numbers: both candidates are smart and do this well; so can many people you wouldn’t want in the White House on the best day of their lives. This is a crisis for each of them; the stakes are huge. How do they handle it? Are they cautious? Reckless? Unprepared? Impulsive? Brave?

6. Try to ignore whether you like either candidate, but rather examine about whether they can be persuasive to others. Try to adjust for your biases.

7. Be open to having your mind changed. The hardest task of all.

8. After the debate is over, make up your own mind before you listen to any of the partisan analysts. All Republicans will say Romney won; all Democrats will say Obama won, except pundits who want to stand out as the “objective” ones. Most of them are calculating too. Confirmation bias operates in overdrive in such events: the partisans really see it the way they want to. Ignore them. Don’t listen to them. How did you feel about the debate? That’s all that matters. Nobody knows how you should react to it better than you do.

9. Watch it. This is important, and we are lucky to have the system we have, as rotten as it often is.

One For The “Innocent Until Proven Guilty” Crowd

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

Stop scaring my dog!

A commenter recently pulled out the hoary and almost always misused “innocent until proven guilty” line, which reliably makes me scream, frightening the dog and the neighbors. Thus I was happy to see this September 28 ruling by the Louisiana Supreme Court, which found that Philip Pilie, a 2007 University of Georgia School of Law  who passed the bar examination in 2009, lacked the character and fitness to be admitted to practice in the state, despite the fact that he was not convicted of the crime that resulted in his disqualification.

Why? Because he did it, that’s why. Pilie contacted what he thought was a 15-year-old girl online and arranged to have sex. She was, unfortunately for Pilie, really a big, hairy, middle-aged man looking for predators who like to have sex with under-age girls. Pilie  was arrested at the planned rendezvous and charged with two  felonies,  computer-aided solicitation of a minor and attempted indecent behavior with a minor.

Pilie negotiated a deal with the district attorney to avoid prosecution. He completed a pre-trial diversion program including counseling, and all charges  were dropped. Pilie took and passed the bar exam, but was informed  in March 2009 that he lacked the character and fitness for admission to practice, because he trolled on computers for young girls to have sex with, by his own admission. His appeal to Louisiana’s highest court failed, twice.

In the latest decision, the court said that Pilie’s lack of a criminal conviction made no difference in its reasoning. “Had petitioner been a practicing attorney at the time of his misconduct, it is very likely he would have been permanently disbarred,” it wrote. “Given this fact, we can conceive of no circumstance under which we would ever admit petitioner to the practice of law.” Pilie was permanently barred from ever again seeking admission, without ever being “convicted in a court of law.” Continue reading →

Just Stop It—You’re Embarrassing Yourselves

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

Oh yeah? Well this guy is a ROMNEY supporter!

As evidence grows that the keynote speaker at the Democratic National Convention may have been practicing law in Massachusetts—the state she seeks to represent in the U.S. Senate—without proper legal authorization, the description of the matter in the mainstream media, to the extent that it is mentioned at all, is that “the conservative blogosphere” is making the accusation. This ritual drives me to distraction, as readers of Ethics Alarms know. But if conservatives want to be given more respect when they uncover a legitimate story that the biased media will try to ignore or bury, they have to stop indulging themselves in utter garbage like this. Continue reading →

Most Unethical TV Series Episode of the Year: “C.S.I.” (Premiere)

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

In next week’s episode, D.B. dreams that he owns a bar in Boston….

I like “C.S.I.”, especially since Ted Danson took over the show as family man D.B. Russell. I won’t be watching the show for long, however, if it continues to cheat its audience as it did tonight, in the much heralded premiere to the new season.

The plot involved the kidnapping of Russell’s granddaughter in an extortion plot engineered by an imprisoned Vegas mobster. In fact, there wasn’t much to the story: they tracked down the little girl, and she was alive. The show was padded out by an obnoxious and unprecedented gimmick for “C.S.I”, showing scenes of great tragedy, violence or drama that turned out to be nothing but dark forebodings in Ted Danson’s stressed-out head. We see him viewing the body of his daughter in the coroner’s lab; she has a bullet hole in her temple. Surprise! It’s not really happening! Ted is just dreading it, because he’s so worried. D.B. gets a gun, goes in to a holding cell to talk to the mobster, loses his cool and shoots him dead. Oops! That didn’t happen either! D.B. is just thinking about how much he’d like to do that, you see. After the child is found unharmed, after real events that would have taken up about a 30 minute episode, D.B./Danson comes home to find his beloved wife leaving him! Oh, no, not that! D.B. loves his…Dang! They got me again!  That was just another day dream! Continue reading →

“Your Boss Is Insane”

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

On the site Learn Stuff, Sarah Wenger has produced an infographic with a strong ethics message, aimed at the vast number of people in management and supervisory positions in business who abuse their position and power, making those they lead miserable, unproductive, and insane themselves. How many horrible bosses inflict themselves on the nation? That is a mystery, though we know it’s a lot. Incompetent, unfair and irresponsible supervisors at all levels,  as the feature states,

“cost their employees their health and the U.S. economy some serious cash. Employees with bad bosses can lose their hair, gain weight and up their chances of heart disease by a whopping 25%. And to top it all off, poorly managed workplaces are less profitable and have lower levels of productivity. Psychopathic bosses: bad for you, bad for the economy.”

The problem is that management is hard, leadership is harder, formal training in either cannot cure personality defects that make being successful in these two endeavors unlikely, and because truly talented managers and leaders are so rare, most people rise to positions of power without ever experiencing what effective leadership is. A good starting point for any boss is a commitment to fairness and respect, as well as an understanding of what responsibility and accountability mean. That, of course, means ethics.

Here is Sarah Wenger’s infographic, “Your Boss is Insane,” re-published with her permission: Continue reading →

Airport Ethics: And This Is How Cheating Becomes Respectable

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

The owners of these bags are suckers.

Traveling from Cleveland to Washington. D.C., today, I noted that the ridiculous airport baggage checking policies have borne predictable fruit. Easily 50% of the fliers on my plane cheated, sneaking their bags through security to avoid the luggage charge.

And it is cheating.

The airline charges $25 for each bag checked. The airport screeners don’t know or care who is on what flight, so it is easy to get bags through security that are too large to fit in the overhead compartments of some or all flights. Once you get them through security (slowing down the line for everyone else: the line in Cleveland went so slowly that I though I was in a Candid Camera stunt. Six travelers celebrated birthdays, two retired, and one girl went through puberty while we waited. And I had to shave repeatedly), the attendant at the gate will tell you that your bag won’t fit, and gives you a tag. You tag the bag, and leave it on the jetway. Then it is picked up and put on the flight. After you land, the bag is delivered to the jetway, meaning that the cheaters also get their bags without waiting for the carousel, or having to worry about them getting lost. Continue reading →