From the You Find Ethical Controversies in the Strangest Places Dept., this post from “About the Occult”:
“There are many people (about 0.5%) who use PSI [psychic abilities, to you non-X Files fans] to do evil. Are there laws concerning that? Using ESP AT ALL should be ILLEGAL!!! It is UNETHICAL!!!”
The ethical analysis is certainly sound, even if the assumptions are flawed.
In an earlier post this month, I related the story of Ethan Haines, an unemployed, newly-graduated lawyer who was staging a hunger strike, he said, to protest the fact that law schools misled their recruits about the employment prospects of their graduates. I was not sympathetic, and concluded:
“Law degrees still are valuable credentials, as is a good legal education, and if Haines got a good legal education, he received everything a law school is obligated to provide. Turning the degree into a career is his responsibility, and it is wrong for him to claim that anyone but himself is accountable for his present unemployed state.”
His stunt was more than an avoidance of responsibility and accountability, however it was a lie. Continue reading
The Department of Agriculture, in a desperate effort at damage control (and to make amends for its unprofessional and unfair treatment of her), offered Shirley Sherrod another job. She has turned it down, saying, “I know [DOA Secretary Tom Vilsack] apologized, and I accept that. And a new process is in place, and I hope that it works. I don’t want to be the one that tests it.”
Excellent. Brava! Continue reading
It is an old ethical problem: what is “fair”? If you help someone, are you obligated to help everyone? Does charity have to be consistent to be fair? Does a potential beneficiary of generosity have a right to demand it? It is obviously good for those who are fortunate and successful to share the benefits of their success with the unfortunate and less successful, but is it unethical if they choose not to?
These are some of the ethics issues being raised in a controversy launched by the major league baseball veterans, now retired, who played between 1947-1979. In those days, when free agency was just beginning and top players made six-figure salaries rather than seven or eight as they do now, a player needed four full years of time on a big league roster to qualify for medical benefits and an annuity. In 1980, however, new rules put in place by the Major League Baseball Players Association granted health insurance benefits to those with just one day of service, and a pension after merely six weeks. The new benefits were not retroactive. Continue reading
[TV is full of reruns these days, and sometimes I am grateful for them, for it gives me a chance to see episodes of favorite shows I had missed for some reason or another. Back in early March, I posted the following essay about the origins of America’s current crisis of trust in our government, and how it might be cured by our elected leaders. Since then, the crisis has deepened, and as I was doing some routine site maintenance, I reread the post. It is still very timely (unfortunately), and since far fewer people were visiting Ethics Alarms in March, I decided to re-post it today, with just a few minor edits. I promise not to make this a habit. Still, trust is the reason why ethics is so important in America: if there is a single post of the more than 700 I have written here since October 2009 that I would like people to read, this is it.] Continue reading
On Aug. 6 in Washington, D.C., a violent brawl broke out among 70 people, most of them teenaged or close to it, at the Gallery Place Metro Station. There were arrests, and several people landed in the hospital. Pitched battle in the usually staid D.C. subways are not daily occurrences, yet the Washington Post apparently found itself short-handed, faint of heart, or both: its initial and follow-up stories on the event had little information. What started the fight? What happened? Who were the combatants? How long did it last? Continue reading
It is unusual to see a woman defending non-payment of child support, but that is just what blogger Elaine Doxie does in a recent post. She argues that enforcing child support may be unethical when the non-paying parent has legitimate reasons for non-payment. Her arguments that child support enforcement can be unethical show a serious misunderstanding of what an obligation is.
Speaking of “deadbeat dads”, Doxie writes, “They may be unemployed, hospitalized, in jail or even a prisoner of war, and are all treated as if they got into the situation they are in just to get out of paying child support.” The logic behind child support is that a parent’s obligations do not change just because he or she is not living with the child. An unemployed father in a family still has to feed and clothe and otherwise care for the needs of his children; he can’t just take care of himself and argue, “Hey, times are tough!” Continue reading
The Los Angeles teachers union is demonstrating the difficult and complex ethical dilemmas endemic to all teachers unions. Because the unions represent teachers rather than their students, the unions can, and often are, placed in the position of supporting their membership to the detriment of the children the members have a duty to serve. And because the teachers who need the most protection from adverse employment actions are usually the worst and least dedicated teachers, a moderation of the unions’ priorities to recognize a duty to the students is less likely to occur.
The L.A. union’s president just announced that he was organizing a “massive boycott” of The Los Angeles Times because the newspaper has begun publishing a series of articles that explore student test scores to assess the effectiveness of Los Angeles public school teachers. Continue reading
Two impolitic, frequently uncivil, ideologically zealous and widely disliked public figures just picked up Ethics Hero credentials by bucking the worst tendencies of their natural political allies, and making a stand for more understanding and less mindless partisan combat.
First, Ann Coulter, the political commentator/performance artist whose acid comments about the liberal establishment would make Rush Limbaugh blush: She was kicked off the bill for the ultra-conservative WorldNetDaily’s “Taking America Back Conference” in Miami because she agreed to speak at Homocon, an event organized by gay Republican group GOProud. Continue reading
Smart unethical politicians can do a lot of harm; it may be years or decades until the public catches on to them, if ever. But unethical politicians who are not so bright do everyone a favor. They don’t know how to cover their misconduct; they often don’t even realize it is misconduct. With luck, they flag both their lack of ethics and their shortage of gray matter while they are running for office.
Take Bessemer, Alabama Councilwoman Dorothy Davidson, who is running for mayor of the city. Continue reading
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