fairness

The Selfish Brother, the Stranded Passengers, and the Key To Ethical Problem-Solving

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

Carolyn Hax is an advice and relationship columnist, not an ethicist. Still, her ethical instincts, values and ethics problem-solving technique are impeccable. This week, she schooled her readers on the most important step in approaching any ethical dilemma: define the problem correctly.

An inquirer asked Hax,

“Am I being selfish in insisting that my parents can stay with us for only two weeks after the birth of our first child? My brother thinks so and isn’t speaking to me.”

As the letter proceeded, crucial details appeared.  The writer’s parents had suffered some kind of financial crisis that required them to move into the brother’s home. The brother’s wife is pregnant. It looks like the stay will be six months, and the brother wants his sibling’s family, new baby notwithstanding, to do its fair share. Two weeks out of six months doesn’t seem fair to Bro.

Hax nailed the problem with the letter immediately: Continue reading →

What Would Happen If, While Submitting To a TSA Search, You Started Singing “The Piña Colada Song”?

/ Jack Marshall / 87 Comments

"Would you cut the comedy please? I'm trying to feel you up!"

A retired Air Force Lt. Colonel apparently was arrested at a TSA airport checkpoint after she refused to stop reciting the Fourth Amendment of the Bill of Rights (“Searches and Seizures”) while she was being screened. You can read her account here.

I’m not going to jump on the bandwagon of the various commentators from both sides of the political spectrum who are leading condemnation of the incident. My interest is in the ethics of the encounter and its subsequent reporting, as I do not see this as an example of official abuse and suppression of rights.

I object to much of how the Department of Homeland Security and the TSA has handled airport screening policy since 2001, as I discussed in this post and elsewhere. I agree that the public should not meekly accept what it regards as unjustified intrusions on their privacy, dignity and health, and that complaining, petitioning the government, putting pressure on elected and appointed officials and leveling criticism in various forums is a necessary and reasonable response. Nevertheless, the episode described in the accounts of this arrest has been mischaracterized. It was a situation in which TSA agents were placed in an impossible situation for the purpose of generating third-party indignation. The woman engaging in the protest also targeted individuals who can only be called innocent parties, the TSA screeners. They have a job, they have procedures to follow, and they have to follow them. They also have a lousy job, having to brush up against the privates of strangers while being glared at or verbally abused.

My question, as with many protests, is, “What was the objective here?” To be as annoying as possible? To cause a scene? To let everyone in the vicinity know that the woman objected to the procedures? To come as close to interfering with the screening process as possible without justifying an arrest? To get her name in the papers? To delay her fellow passengers, most of whom just want to get through the vile process and make their flights?

Or to get arrested? Continue reading →

Ethics Quote Of The Day: Allahpundit

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

"Hide! The Vice-President says that if the jobs bill doesn't pass, we might be raped!!!"

“The very first question at the next Solyndra hearing should be, “How many rapes could Democrats have prevented by giving that $535 million to cops instead?”

—“Hot Air” blogger Allahpundit, marking the below-the-belt tactics of Vice President Joe Biden, who angrily suggested that Republicans who voted against the President’s jobs bill would be responsible for rapes and murders because of the resulting inadequate numbers of police.

Biden’s fear-mongering is beyond demogoguery, whatever the virtues of the President’s bill. States make budgetary decisions, and if a state’s priorities in funding didn’t include sufficient police personnel to prevent rapes and murders, the state is accountable, not Congressional Republicans (and Democrats) who don’t like the President’s bill. Meanwhile, the jobs bill seeks $5 billion for cops (and firefighters) and $30 billion for teachers. Is Obama willing to risk more rapes by not putting more money into law enforcement and less into teacher’s unions?  Continue reading →

Most Troubling Comment During The GOP Debate: Mitt Romney

/ Jack Marshall / 37 Comments

The runner-up in this category, as I have come to expect, was Michelle Bachmann’s…

“The president, he put us in Libya. He is now putting us in Africa.”

If any other candidate, or President Obama, had said this, no one would blink: an innocent misstatement, obviously. With Bachmann, however, and her record of historical and factual howlers, one has to pause. Does the Congresswoman really not know that Libya is in Africa? After all, a large portion of Americans don’t. It is not unfair to judge Bachmann’s comment in the context of our general impression of her knowledge and precision of expression, but avoiding confirmation bias is almost impossible. If you think Bachmann’s a dolt, then the gaffe is just more proof. If you admire and respect her, you ignore the mistake (we know what she means, after all) and the criticism confirms that everyone is predisposed to be unfair to your candidate. I will say this: Bachmann is at fault for eroding her credibility to the point that a statement like this raises any doubts at all. I am inclined to give her the benefit of the doubt, but the doubt is there, nonetheless.

The winning entry in the debate, revealing a disturbing ethical orientation in a spontaneous remark, was Mitt Romney’s comment in the midst of objecting to Gov. Perry’s allegation about Romney’s hypocrisy in criticizing Perry’s record on illegal immigration after employing illegals himself: Continue reading →

Comment of the Day: “Dear AIG: I’m Not Going To Be Able To Keep Criticizing Occupy Wall Street For Destructive Class Warfare If You Act Like This”

/ Jack Marshall / Leave a comment

Michael, who now leads the field in Comments of the Day, picks up another with his commentary on my post about AIG’s continuing habit of living large on taxpayer funds. Here are his reflections on the post  Dear AIG: I’m Not Going To Be Able To Keep Criticizing “Occupy Wall Street” For Destructive Class Warfare If You Act Like This:

“A company can allow any expenses they want. That being said, since they are now majority owned by the US government, we need to ask who is giving the go ahead to things like this? Why haven’t they been fired? The Wall Street culture is so entitled and so out of touch with the reality of the common Americans that it is almost beyond belief.

“The Occupy Wall Street group could have a lot of legitimate gripes, but they don’t seem to have anyone with half a brain in the group. Instead of hearing “I want them to take the money from rich people and give it to me” form a college aged girl wearing $500 worth of clothes or “I have gone to every protest I can find for the last 40 years” from the aging hippies, why not try one of the following angles: Continue reading →

Dear AIG: I’m Not Going To Be Able To Keep Criticizing “Occupy Wall Street” For Destructive Class Warfare If You Act Like This.

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments

Pelican Hill...where wealthy insurance executives can spend taxpayer funds like it was Monopoly money!

American International Group Inc. (AIG), the huge insurer—too big to fail!— that is now majority-owned by the U.S. after a 2008 bailout of $85 billion, has resumed its arrogant, irresponsible habit of living like sultans on the money of taxpayers, many of whom are getting kicked out of their homes and who can’t find jobs.

Back in October 0f 2008, the House Oversight Committee nearly had a collective stroke when it discovered that, just one week after the federal government bailed out AIG because it was too vital a part of the shaky world financial markets to let go belly-up as it richly deserved, company executives went on a wildly-expensive retreat to a luxury resort. The executives “spent nearly $500,000 on manicures, facials, pedicures, and massages,” among other things.  Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD) was incredulous, and he wasn’t alone: Continue reading →

Genome Sequences, Consent, and Scientist Ethics

/ Jack Marshall / 35 Comments

What...you don't trust this guy???

Few things are scarier than when scientists start debating ethics.

A current debate in the scientific community involves whether it is ethical to publish your genome sequence without asking permission from family members. It is increasingly common for people to pay to have their genome scanned for the presence of traits, including genetic diseases. Scientists agree that releasing this information without the permission of the individual whose genes are described would be a clear ethical breach. The controversy involves whether an individual is ethically obligated to get consent from family members before publishing his or her own genome sequence, since to some extent that means publishing theirs as well.

The argument proceeds from the unauthorized release of someone’s genome sequence by a third party to the plight of an identical twin whose sibling wants to publish his own sequence, which, of course, also describes his twin’s.  This is ethically clear too: it would be wrong not to seek permission. But what about the rest of the family? Continue reading →

Comment of the Day:”Catawba Valley Community College vs. FIRE, Free Speech and Fairness”

/ Jack Marshall / Leave a comment

"Being courageous, challenging authority and exercising your right to free speech is no way to go through life, son."

Michael supplies an answer to my question, “What is going on with colleges and universities?” to begin the recent post about yet another example of a college trying to strangle inconvenient free expression on campus. Here is his Comment of the Day on Catawba Valley Community College vs. FIRE, Free Speech and Fairness:

“Colleges used to be run by faculty. Senior faculty members would be promoted to department heads, then deans, then provosts, and finally presidents. Their whole career, they would teach and be in contact with students. The faculty used to have a strong voice, including the ability to remove a sitting president if they felt it was necessary. Continue reading →

Catawba Valley Community College vs. FIRE, Free Speech and Fairness

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

Wait a minute...YES! It's FIRE to the rescue!!

Will someone please  tell me what is going on with colleges and universities lately?

Has there been a collective nervous breakdown among administrators? Is the stress getting to be too much? As the walls close in, with institutions realizing that they are charging far too much for diplomas that neither signify knowledge nor enhance employability, are they abusing power in a futile effort to pretend they are in control of a deteriorating situation beyond their control? I don’t know, but thank heaven for the Foundation For Individual Rights in Education, whose mission of protecting students and academics from abusive restrictions on their rights of free though and expression on university campuses is more crucial than ever.

FIRE’s latest rescue mission was on behalf of Marc Bechtol, a student at Catawba Valley Community College in North Carolina. In June, the College announced that all students would receive a CVCC branded Debit Mastercard according to the institution’s partnership with Higher One, a financial services company. The debit card also serves as the official student ID, so there was no way to opt out of the arrangement. In order to activate his card, Bechtol and other students were required to supply their Social Security numbers, dates of birth, and student numbers. Bechtol smelled a rat, and he has a good nose: this arrangement may be legal, but it is unethical. The school is forcing students to do business with a for-profit entity that will have access to sensitive and personal data. Bechtol objected to CVCC and Higher One  marketing its checking accounts through emails to students, making claims that they would get their tuition refunds and Pell Grants faster if they opened Higher One accounts.  One such email had the subject line, “Want your refund? Activate your CVCC Onecard today!”

After Bechtol activated his own debit card, he said he received a marketing phone call from Orchard Bank, trying to get him to apply for a credit card—smoking gun evidence that his proprietary information, forced out of him by his college, was being sold to marketing firms. Annoyed, Bechtol sharply criticized CVCC’s unethical partnership with Higher One on the school’s Facebook page, writing “Did anyone else get a bunch of credit card spam in their CVCC inbox today? So, did CVCC sell our names to banks, or did Higher One? I think we should register CVCC’s address with every porn site known to man. Anyone know any good viruses to send them? …OK, maybe that would be a slight overreaction.”

One week after posting this, Bechtol was taken out of a class by the CVCC Executive Officer of Student Services and told that he would not be permitted to return. Continue reading →

The 9-11 Photo And A Columnist’s Character

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

One thing I have learned about personal ethics: they are imposible to hide. Ethical individuals eventually show their values in grand style, and those without ethics, or whose ethical values are corroded, frayed and rotting, show their true colors as well. Thus it was no surprise to me when Frank Rich, once one of America’s most unfair drama critics who turned into one of the media’s most vicious opinion columnists, exposed the content of his character in grand style with a New York Time column last month about 9-11. Continue reading →