fairness

In The Catholic Institutions vs Obamacare Showdown, Law and Ethics Trump Morality…And Should

/ Jack Marshall / 118 Comments

The Christian Soldiers are on the wrong side of this argument.

A controversial rule, announced last month as part of President Obama’s health-care overhaul, requires religiously affiliated colleges and hospitals to provide female employees the full range of contraceptive coverage, including contraceptives, the “morning-after pill” and sterilization services. The measure has  Catholic Church-run institutions up in arms over a system that would force them would  to offer plans that contradict their teachings. Catholic bishops have been leading the growing criticism of the rule,  distributing letters and other materials for distribution to millions of worshipers. Talk radio is abuzz with talk of Obama’s escalating “war on religion.” Even the Washington Post editorial staff criticized the move.

Naturally, the Republican-run Congress announced, via Speaker Boehner, that it would protect Freedom of Religion and block the measure with legislation. All in all, it is a spectacular collision of law, morality and ethics the likes of which we seldom see.

As for simple-minded me, I don’t think this is an especially difficult problem from an ethical point of view. Politics? Practicalities? Culture wars? Yes, those are all extremely difficult considerations in this argument, but they are also not my proper realm. The ethics are clear.

President Obama is right. Continue reading →

Old Testament Treatment For The Miramonte Elementary School Culture

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

It could be worse; at least no teachers have been turned into pillars of salt.

Following the discovery that two Miramonte Elementary School teachers, Mark Berndt and Martin Springer,  allegedly engaged  in lewd activity with students, Los Angeles Unified School District made the brave decision to replace all teachers and staff, with everyone being re-assigned. Predictably, there have been protests and criticism. The basic argument: it is excessive and unfair. The good teachers, whoever they were, weren’t at fault.

Yes, they were; at least, they were responsible, and share accountability for a culture they were part of. The school district’s decision correctly assumes that when two members of a relatively small teaching staff abuse young children over a long period, something is rotten at the school beyond those teachers. Oversight is lax, administrators are looking the other way, teachers are protecting colleagues or refusing to acknowledge the implications of what they see or hear. There is a substantial chance that the Miramonte Elementary School didn’t just have some proverbial bad apples, but that it had created a culture that encouraged apples to go bad. There can be no certainty that Berndt and Springer were the only abusers on the staff, and the safety of children is at stake. Clear out the school, and wipe out the culture; have new personnel from top to bottom. It is easier to start over with a rotten culture than to try to fix it: this was God’s attitude in the Old Testament, and He had a point. The difference is that He killed off corrupt cultures with floods and fire, or just made them wander in the desert for generations.  Luckily, this isn’t Congress, Wall Street, Hollywood, or Rupert Murdoch’s empire. You can start all over with a school. Continue reading →

Nipping A Terrible Idea In the Bud

/ Jack Marshall / 21 Comments

God bless America.

In policy debates over contentious issues like abortion, national health care, and capital punishment, a common argument, brandished like a flag , is that the United States is out of step with the rest of the world. My reflex reaction to that claim, when I can resist the impulse to say, “Good!”, is to point out that the rest of the world has never lacked for enthusiasms for terrible ideas, and the United States, by going in its own direction, has often been unique, innovative, and right.

Still, a bad idea abroad will inevitably inspire some enterprising social architect here to propose it, and a legislator to try to make it law. Thus, when possible, it is wise to try to identify and reject the most sinister examples of Europe being Europe before anyone here starts trying to play “me too.” In the case of Europe’s current push to create a so-called “right to be forgotten” on the internet, some very effective critics are on the case. Continue reading →

Ethics Dunce: Judge Barbara Jaffe

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

Yes, it's true this teacher wrote on Facebook that she wished her fifth grade students DEAD, but the comment was only meant for her friends to see, and hey, just because she hates them doesn't mean she can't teach them...so it's OK. Right, Judge?

New York Judge Barbara Jaffe disagrees with me on the issue I discussed here regarding Natalie Munroe, the elementary school teacher who still has her job despite professing her contempt and dislike for her elementary students and their parents on her blog. Thanks to Jaffe, Christine Rubino, whose online comments about her students were infinitely worse, has won a court challenge to her firing from her job teaching at PS 203 in Brooklyn, New York. The judge is wrong, and I am right. The judge is also a fool.

Imagine: last March,  the day after a 12-year-old Harlem schoolgirl drowned during a class trip to a Long Island beach, Rubino posted a vicious rant about her fifth-graders on her Facebook page. “After today,” she wrote, ” I’m thinking the beach is a good trip for my class. I hate their guts.”

A Facebook friend quickly asked, “Wouldn’t you throw a life jacket to little Kwami?” Kwami was the child who drowned. The 38-year teacher replied: “No I wouldn’t for a million dollars.” Continue reading →

The Lenahan Effect Meets The Streisand Effect

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

From the Legal Ethics Forum:

The Lenahan Law Firm in Dallas Texas has subpoenaed Google to release the real name of an anonymous critic who posted an un complimentary online review of the firm’s services. The firm wants to sue the poster for daring to question its performance by writing,

“Bad experience with this firm. I don’t trust the fake reviews here.”

For this perceived insult, the Lenahan firm wants to punish “Ben” to the tune of $50, 000 in damages.

Ironically, the lawsuit, rather than the review, proves to my satisfaction that “Ben” has a point. He was clearly expressing his opinion: it is up to him, and only him, whether he regards the experience of working with the Lenahan firm as “bad” or not. In the complaint, the firm says that the declaration that the positive reviews are “fake” alleges dishonesty and fraud by the firm. Utter nonsense. First of all, the allegation, fair or not, is also obviously an opinion. Second, “Ben” is saying that the reviews are fake, which could mean insincere, among other interpretations. He does not attribute them to the firm. He doesn’t say where they came from. He doesn’t know. Maybe I sent them.

On the screen shot included in the complaint, it clearly says that “0 of 3” people found “Ben’s” review helpful. For that, the firm wants $50,000 in damages, since that zero potential client was driven to another firm with his lucrative business.

Unbelievable.

Over at Popehat, lawyer-blogger (and Ethics Alarms 2011 Ethics Blogger of the Year) Ken has been carrying on a vigorous battle against online censorship of free expression by threats and lawsuits. His current target is a ridiculous faux lawyer who is now threatening Ken for pointing out the error of his ways. In his commentary as well as his various emails to the individual, Ken explains with admirable precision why opinions are not actionable assertions of fact, useful passages that I would recommend to the Lenahan Law firm. The firm’s efforts to bully critics by making an example out of “Ben” also unwisely incur the “Streisand Effect,” the online phenomenon by which efforts to censor information on the web has the perverse consequence of giving it more visibility and influence.

I don’t know if there is a name for the effect—“The Lenahan Effect,” perhaps?—by which a law firm’s willingness to pursue a spurious, unnecessary and excessive lawsuit against a former client for expressing his views about the firm’s work has the perverse effect of showing the world why that client feels the way he does, but that’s what the Lenahan lawsuit against “Ben” does.

That’s only my opinion, of course.

The Susan G. Komen Foundation-Planned Parenthood Ethics Train Wreck

/ Jack Marshall / 53 Comments

Unlike the 26 U.S. Senators who are unethically abusing their positions by presuming to demand that an independent non profit organization expend its funds according to their interests, I am not going to tell the board of the Susan G. Komen Foundation how to pursue its mission…because as with the Senators, it is none of my business. Ethics is my business, and the full-blown ethics train wreck surrounding the Foundation’s decision to end its substantial financial support of Planned Parenthood has been created by dishonesty, misrepresentation and a lack of fairness from all directions.

Here are some unpopular ethics truths in this fiasco. Continue reading →

Ethics Quote of the Week: George Clooney

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

“I think it’s a stupid thing. I think it’s stupid for anyone, whether they’re celebrated or not, I don’t believe their 911 calls should be broadcast around the world.” 

"Poor Demi! The public has a right to hear us humiliate her."

—-Actor George Clooney, speaking during Sunday night’s Screen Actors Guild Awards.  He was referring to the release and subsequent airing of a 911 call from a woman summoning rescue workers for actress Demi Moore, who, the caller said, was convulsing and had lapsed into semi-conscious.

Good call, George.

911 calls are considered public, but that doesn’t mean that the public needs or has to hear them, or that sleaze-factories like TMZ should put them online when their only purpose is titillation and to embarrass celebrities. There may be special circumstances that justify making a recording of a 911 call, rather than a  transcript, available to the public, but those should be exceptions. In cases like Moore’s, playing them is unfair and unkind, a clear Golden Rule violation, not that TMZ, or most journalists for that matter, would know about that.

If the media can’t control itself when it comes into possession of a 911 call that will embarrass someone who already has enough problems to deal with, then we need laws to keep 911 calls out of irresponsible hands…in other words, the news media’s hands.
.

 

“Pay-What-You-Can” Ethics

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

A live performance of Jules Feiffer's "Little Murders" at a regional theater in Arlington, Va. that holds "pay-what-you-can" performances over the periodic objections of its artistic director, me.

Toronto Star ethics columnist Ken Gallinger does a pretty good job today answering a query from a financially strapped theater-lover who feels guilty about attending “pay-what-you-can” professional stage productions. “…My husband says paying less than full fare takes advantage of the theatre company. Technically, we could pay the ticket price; we still have access to credit. And there are things we could cancel…What do you think?” asks the inquirer.

Gallinger explains the benefits to the company of not having a sea of empty seats facing the actors, and also how discount tickets have promotional value to theater companies. All true: the theater companies wouldn’t offer “pay-what-you-can” if they didn’t think it was in their companies’ long term interest. There are other benefits that Gallinger doesn’t mention. For example, the increased audience size still contributes to the average audience statistics that a non-profit company can use to seek advertisements and to argue for community foundation grants.

Even this wouldn’t cover the topic, however. “Pay-what-you-can” and other discount ticket programs are essential if theater companies are going to meet their own ethical obligations to the community, and if live theater is going to survive at all. The ticket prices at most large, established regional theaters are, in a word, unconscionable. Justifiable perhaps, since live theater costs more to produce than can be paid for by box office receipts, but still unconscionable. Continue reading →

And May The Best Man Win

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

As of 1:20 AM, Newt Gingrich had not congratulated Mitt Romney on his Florida Primary win (clobbering Newt), nor did he offer the traditional congratulations to the winner in his concession speech.

I’ll grant Newt this: it isn’t as if he’s pretending to be what he’s not…gracious, fair, respectful, polite, humble, classy. I guess that represents a certain kind of integrity…the integrity to be a jerk, and to be open and unapologetic about it.

Ethics Quiz: Hair, Rules, School, and the Cancer Survivor

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

"I think this has gone far enough, son."

I’m really not picking on the schools, though I’m sure it looks that way. There have just been a wave of strange controversies lately in the halls of academe….like the travails of  J.T. Gaskins, 17, who is fighting with his charter school near Flint, Michigan.

J.T. is a model student; in fact, he was honored on his high school’s “Wall of Fame” for perfect behavior. But he’s doing his school work from home these days after being suspended by the school governing board of Madison Academy in Burton, Michigan. The reason:  the length of his hair. J.T. is a leukemia survivor, and he decided over the holidays to grow out his hair, cut it all off and give it to a non-profit group called Locks of Love, which donates hairpieces to kids undergoing cancer treatments. He was inspired to get growing after learning that the sister of a family friend had cancer.

Gaskins’ long hair is violating school policy, however, and he was told to cut it, or go home. So home he went. “I fought cancer my entire life. I’m going to keep fighting this,” he said. “I’m not going to not give back just because my school says no.” Continue reading →