fairness

How Partisanship Corrupts Us All At Election Time

/ Jack Marshall / Leave a comment

The upcoming election, among other horrible things, will stand as a landmark of ethical corruption, as parties, news sources and voters will have thoroughly abandoned integrity and weakened their core values by excusing damning behavior from their favored candidates, behavior that, if honestly and objectively evaluated, should disqualify them from any office of trust.

We have already seen disturbing examples of this phenomenon in such embarrassing displays as Rep. Charles Rangel’s birthday celebration, as major Democrats lined up to give tribute to a Congressman who has abandoned multiple ethical duties, including an absolute disgrace for any Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, willful tax evasion. Rather than take a stand for honest government and representatives the public can believe in, partisan supporters are blaming Rangel’s self-made problems on Republican attacks, as if they made Charlie do it all at gunpoint.

The same theme is being echoed by conservatives on talk radio, who are making the case that the ridiculous Christine O’Donnell, who has undeniably misused campaign funds and misrepresented her educational background numerous times and ways, is being criticized for these “errors” because of a “media double-standard.” The only way to interpret such a defense is that the people making it believe all lies, misuse of donations and efforts to mislead the public are excusable if the press has ever ignored them when the transgressor was from the other party. Or they really don’t believe that, but are saying that they do. Either way, they are corrupt. Continue reading →

Ethics Dunces: Beaverton, Oregon School District Administrators

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

This one is the easiest of calls.

Seth Stambaugh, a student teacher for the 4th and 5th grades at an elementary school in Beaverton, Oregon, was asked by one of the students if he was married. Stambaugh said he was not and, when the student asked why, replied that it would be illegal for him to get married in Oregon because he “would choose to marry another guy.” The student asked if that meant Stambaugh preferred to be with other men, and Stambaugh responded, “Yeah.”

As a result of this exchange, a parent complained, and Stambaugh was fired. Continue reading →

The Duty of Candor and Rich Iott, the Tea Party’s Nazi Re-enactor Candidate

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that Rich Iott, the Tea Party darling who is the Republican candidate for Ohio’s 9th District, isn’t necessarily unfit to be a U.S. Representative just because he used to dress up as a Nazi soldier, although he would have to come up with a much better explanation of why he thought that was a fun thing to do than he has managed to do so far. And if he’s planning on borrowing Christine O’Donnell’s “I am not a witch” campaign video approach—“I am not a Nazi. I’m you!” Worth a shot? Nah—-he should forget it. Still, let’s give him the benefit of a very large doubt.

It doesn’t help. He has still disqualified himself.

The reason—other than the fact that he admires Nazis—Rich Iott has disqualified himself from any elected office of trust is that he never disclosed to his movement, his party, his supporters, the media or the voters an aspect of his background that was absolutely, beyond a shadow of a doubt, “Bet the farm on it, Maggie, ’cause the horse is a sure thing!” certain to embarrass him and anyone who believed in his candidacy if it came to light, before or after the election. Continue reading →

The Training Myth and Connick v. Johnson

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

The U.S. Supreme Court is deliberating on the issue of whether a District Attorney’s office can be held liable when individual prosecutors commit serious misconduct, on the grounds that the government breached its duty to train its prosecutors and ensure their competence. The case is Connick v. Thompson, and it began when it was discovered that a New Orleans man had been sent to Death Row for 18 years for a crime he hadn’t committed. John Thompson was innocent, and a lab report proving that the blood found at the crime scene belonged to someone else would have proven it. Prosecutors withheld the evidence from the defense attorneys.

When Thompson was freed he was understandably angry, but the options for redress when the criminal justice system ruins your life are severely and unjustly limited. In 1976, the Supreme Court decided in Imbler v. Pachtman that prosecutors have absolute immunity from lawsuits, even when there is genuine, malicious and illegal conduct. The Court acknowledged that its ruling “does leave the genuinely wronged defendant without civil redress against a prosecutor whose malicious or dishonest action deprives him of liberty,” but declared the alternative was worse: making prosecutors timid and fearful of making a mistake that could leave them penniless. The Court suggested that professional discipline would be enough to keep prosecutors honest, but that hasn’t been the case: a USA Today study found that even in egregious cases of prosecutorial misconduct, attorneys who put innocent people in jail almost never had to endure any punishment at all. Thompson sued the District Attorney’s Office on a theory of negligent training, and won 14 million dollars from a sympathetic jury. Now the Supreme Court is deciding whether such suit can stand in light of the ruling in Pachtman.

It should, but the theory behind the lawsuit is a myth, and I suspect that everyone knows it. Continue reading →

Dr. James Watson: There, But For Red Tape, Goes Dr. Mengele

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

Dr. James D. Watson, Nobel Prize winner, will always have a place among the highest echelons of scientific achievement, no matter what thoughtless and dangerous things he says. Still, the co-discoverer of the double helix is slowly tarnishing his reputation by a series of gaffes. A few years ago, he opined that there was no way to avoid the conclusion that African-Americans just weren’t as intelligent, on average, as whites: the predictable uproar sent him into retirement. Now, as Watson reaps the well-deserved bounty of career honors in his eighties, he is endorsing the retreat from the standards of medical research ethics originally inspired by the diabolical human experimentation performed on helpless adults and children by nightmarish Nazi researcher, Dr. Josef  Mengele. Mengele believed that human beings could be reasonably sacrificed if the benefits to society and humanity generally were great enough, in his estimation, of course. Apparently, so does Watson. Continue reading →

Let Us Not Forget Itawamba County, Miss.

/ Jack Marshall / 21 Comments

I am haunted second thoughts about awarding Obion County the title of Unethical Community of the Year.

For one thing, it is only October, and there is a lot of time for another unethical community or more to reveal its lack of decency to the nation and the world (and then to have Keith Olbermann declare that it represents the ideal for Tea Partiers). Still, I am having a hard time imagining anything worse for an American community than directing its fire department to let a human being’s home burn down, whether or not the homeowner has three dogs and a cat (as Mr. Cranick did, and I emphasize did), because that human being didn’t pay a $75 fee.

The real reason I am having doubts, however, is the horrible tale that came to light this past spring.  Continue reading →

Keith Olbermann’s Alan Grayson Imitation

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

As bad as it is for an elected official like Rep. Alan Grayson to say publicly that “Republicans want you to die,” at least his status as a politician (and Grayson’s record as a politician lacking rudimentary respect, fairness, and honesty) alerts most listeners that his statements cannot to be trusted. Such statements are more harmful and less tolerable when they come from media commentators, however, even shameless partisan blow-hards like Keith Olbermann.

Olbermann began his coverage of the fire department in Tennessee that allowed a man’s home to burn down by calling it “a preview of an America as envisioned by the Tea Party…just a preview of what would come in a kind of a la carte government.” Continue reading →

Fire Fighting in Obion County, Unethical Community of the Year

/ Jack Marshall / 34 Comments

In Obion County, Tennessee, a man’s home burned to the ground as the local fire department refused to do anything about it. The homeowner, Gene Cranick, had refused to pay a County fee for fire control services from the neighboring city of South Fulton. It was understood that only homeowners paying the fee would be provided assistance by the fire department, but Cranick, the sly fox, decided to test the system. Not only did he start burning rubbish in his back yard, he let the fire spread to his home. Then, in a panic, he dialed 911 and offered to pay whatever it would take for the South Fulton firefighters to put out the flames…but was told it was too late.  They wouldn’t do anything to stop his house from burning down. They did arrive to help put out the fire when it spread to Cranick’s neighbor’s home, but then he had paid the $75. Continue reading →

George Washington Says Jon Stewart Is An Ethics Dunce

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

All right: Jon Stewart’s post-Rick Sanchez meltdown quip that “All he has to do is apologize to us, and we’ll hire him back!” (evoking Sanchez’s fatal accusation that a conspiracy of Jews runs the news) was pretty funny. The problem is that it and a couple of other barbs he aimed at the fired and disgraced ex-CNN host will be heard by millions three weeks from now, on October 21, when the special “Night Of Too Many Stars” is finally aired. Comedians never have to be kind, fair, empathetic or classy, and often are not—just think about all the jokes about Lindsay Lohan, a sadly immature young woman seemingly incapable of curbing self-destructive behavior—but gloating is gloating, and doing the Flamenco on the face of a fallen adversary is neither attractive not admirable…even if it’s funny. Continue reading →

The Replay and Integrity: Baseball at an Ethics Crossroads

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

On the final day of baseball’s regular season, the San Francisco Giants were playing the San Diego Padres in a contest with post-season implications for both teams. Had the Padres won , it would have forced two one-game playoffs, with the loser of a Giants-Padres showdown today facing the Braves on Tuesday to determine the National League Wild Card team. In the bottom of the first, the Giants’ Andres Torres smashed a Mat Latos  pitch down the left-field line. The ball clearly landed right on the chalk-marked foul line, kicking up a cloud of white dust as undeniable proof that the ball was fair,and the batter destined for second base or beyond. Third-base ump Mike Everitt called it foul, however. Broadcasters, the Giants managers, everyone protested and pointed, but to no avail.

The Giant’s won anyway, so it only mattered to Torres’s batting average. But a time-bomb is ticking. Baseball, which was embarrassed last season into adopting video replay for home run calls, allows no videotape mandated reversals on other blown umpire calls. As the game heads into its period of highest visibility, when casual baseball fans start paying attention to the best teams playing for the title, the likelihood of an obviously wrong call by an umpire leading to an undeserved win in a crucial game is unacceptably high. Why does baseball’s leadership resist a solution? Continue reading →