fairness

Why We No Longer Trust Our Government, Reason #759: North Carolina’s Unethical Tax Stall

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

Every time Gallup  does a poll to find out who the public thinks is ethical and unethical, one result always comes out the same. Over 95% of those polled will say that most ethical person they know is…themselves. I used to make fun of this result in my seminars as a classic example of self-delusion. The used-car dealer really thinks he is the most ethical person he knows? Tom Delay and Charlie Rangel really think that they are the most ethical people they know? I don’t believe it.

But I recently had an epiphany. People don’t really think they are the most ethical. What we do think is that each of us is the one person  that we most trust. Not our spouses, not our parents, not our employers, not our elected officials…no matter how virtuous they may be, the person whom we know, with absolute certainty, won’t betray us  is our self. That is an especially American attitude, embodying self-reliance, autonomy, and independence, and I was wrong not to misread it. Those who deride us for not trusting the government to solve our problems are wrong not to recognize it too, particularly when the attitude is being reinforced by stories like this one, from North Carolina.

The North Carolina Department of Revenue is reviewing  230,000 unresolved tax returns going back to 1994, including cases in which taxpayers overpaid and are owed money by the state. The state, however, has rigged the rules to make it less likely that the refunds are ever made. Continue reading →

Note to the EEOC: “Fairness” Must Not Require The Suspension of Common Sense

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

In the  rich and annoying category of “Official Statements and Actions That Guarantee The Death Of Affirmative Action,” we have the recent warning by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission that companies using criminal records to screen out job applicants might run afoul of anti-discrimination laws and be illegal because such a policy would have the effect of disproportionately disqualifying blacks and Hispanics. Continue reading →

The Unethical Humiliation of Sister Rita X

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

Among conservative radio talk show hosts, Sean Hannity holds a special niche. He is not as entertaining or audacious as Rush Limbaugh, nor as erudite and apoplectic as Mark Levin, nor as funny and acerbic as Laura Ingraham. Hannity is nice, or appears to be. His act (though it seems sincere), is to be reasonable and pleasant, even when under attack. Recently, however, he has been giving excessive air time to a middle-aged African-American caller who goes by the name of “Sister Rita X.” She is a strong, liberal supporter of President Obama, but more importantly, she is bats. Sister Rita not only sings the praises of  Rev. Farrakhan, but believes that God has created a giant flying war machine that is designed to destroy the United States if it doesn’t change its ways.

Hannity seems to think it is amusing to his listeners for him to allow this opinionated, loud and deluded woman rant on in response to his goading. He also thinks, apparently, this it is a powerful indictment of progressive cant to have an advocate of sorts sound just as deranged as conservatives like Hannity believe all liberals really are. Hannity is using Sister Rita, mocking her while he features her, and encouraging her to be as bizarre as possible. “So tell me about this mother ship, or whatever it is, that is going to get us,” he asks. And she does. Continue reading →

The Ethics of Compensating the Unjustly Imprisoned

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

The New York Times last week published the stories of two men, in different states, who were recently freed from prison after it was proven that they were wrongly convicted. Michael A. Green spent 27 years in a Texas penitentiary for a rape he didn’t commit. Thomas Lee Goldstein was locked up 24 years ago for a murder committed by someone else.

The lives of both men have been destroyed, obviously. The important question now is, who is accountable? What is owed to a human being who has been robbed of what should have been the best and most productive years of his life, and who owes it?

Both men will be getting some compensation from the state governments involved, though obviously no amount of money could make them whole: what would you accept in exchange for spending the years from 35 to 60 in a maximum security prison? Goldstein settled a lawsuit for nearly eight million dollars; Green is mulling an offer of $2.2 million from Texas, and may decide to sue to get more. 2.2 million dollars for 27 years in prison…let’s see, that works out to less than $81, 500 a year. Should he take the deal? I would not accept 2.2 million dollars to spend one year in jail, much less 27. Continue reading →

Elevator Ethics

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

Randy Cohen surprised me today. “The Ethicist,” in his weekly column in the Times Magazine, responded to a  question from a Chinese citizen whose office building had only one working elevator, resulting in long lines of office workers waiting to catch a lift to distant floors. Cohen’s inquirer asked if it was unethical for him to run up the stairs to a higher floor, and secure a place on the elevator before it arrived on his original floor, one below.

Cohen said he was “cutting in line,” and that it was unethical. Randy may well be right, but I’m not immediately convinced. Continue reading →

When the President Agrees With Me, He’s Wrong

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

Let’s see if I can make this both coherent and succinct.

President Obama was ethical, responsible, and brave to weigh in on the Ground Zero Mosque (more accurately called “The Two-Blocks From Ground Zero Mosque”), and reaffirm America’s commitment to freedom of religion for all faiths by declaring that the Islamic group has the right to build its planned Islamic center.

After being roundly (and predictably) slammed by conservative talking heads, blogging bigots, and ranting reactionaries for stating the obvious, however, the President (or his advisors; the advisors are the ones who thought this was a dandy time to send Michelle and the kids on a luxury vacation in Spain, and can be identified by the large dunce caps on their heads…) decided to come back and clarify his remarks, lest anyone think he was actually endorsing the idea of an Islamic monument so near the spot where thousands of innocent Americans perished at the hands of Islamic extremists.

“I was not commenting and I will not comment on the wisdom of making the decision to put a mosque there,” Obama told reporters in Panama City, Fla.  “I was commenting very specifically on the right people have that dates back to our founding. That’s what our country is about.” This statement isn’t quite “I didn’t inhale” or “It depends on what the meaning of ‘is’ is,” but it is still a solid candidate for the Presidential Weasel Words Hall of Fame. By saying he would not comment, President Obama was commenting, and implying, by saying what he would not comment about, that if he did comment, it would be that the mosque was probably not such a hot idea, since fairly or not, it was bound to be misunderstood as an insult to the victims of 9-11.

It was inappropriate and wrong for Obama to suggest this, in weasel words or otherwise. (It would be more honest and forthright to eschew the weasel word method, however.) Continue reading →

And You Thought YOUR In-laws Were Bad…

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

Stuart R. Ross, a non-practicing lawyer who, among other dealings, once owned a chunk of the Smurfs franchise, ran out of his own money and began pestering his successful  son-in-law, David S. Blitzer, for investment capital. After Ross blew through the tens of thousands of dollars he got from Blitzer, he demanded more, and Blitzer, a senior managing director of The Blackstone Group, told him that he wasn’t getting any more. So Ross adopted another strategy: he told his daughter’s husband, through repeated e-mails and phone calls, that he would reveal unidentified, career-wrecking secrets about Blitzer if Blitzer didn’t hand over more money—$5.5 million, to be precise. Continue reading →

Ethics Verdict on O’Reilly vs. Aniston: O’Reilly’s No Dan Quayle

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

Jennifer Aniston is promoting her upcoming comedy “The Switch,” about a single woman who becomes a mother through artificial insemination. In one interview. Aniston commented that “Women are realizing more and more that you don’t have to settle, they don’t have to fiddle with a man to have that child.” This rankled Fox News’ star blowhard Bill O’Reilly, who regarded Aniston’s remark as an endorsement of unwed and under-age motherhood, and told his  cable audience that Aniston was “throwing a message out to 12-year-olds and 13-year-olds that, ‘Hey! You don’t need a guy, you don’t need a dad!” His verdict: “That’s destructive to our society!…Aniston can hire a battery of people to help her, but she cannot hire a dad, okay?” Continue reading →

Steven Slater And The Rest of the Story: No Surprises

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

Occasionally, there is cosmic justice. The astounding number of bloggers, media commentators and  ordinary working folks who have expressed admiration for Steven Slater, the irresponsible and unprofessional flight attendant who threw a tantrum of Adam Sandler proportions at the end of a recent Jet Blue flight, appears to have been itching for a confrontation throughout the flight, and had behaved is a rude and provocative manner to more than one passenger.

Well, of course. Continue reading →

A Traveling Photographer’s Code of Ethics

/ Jack Marshall / Leave a comment

The Photo Foodies have posted a sensible, compassionate, clear ethics code for photographers, particularly applicable to those working in foreign countries. It concentrates on the act of taking the photograph, not what one does with the image afterward.

Excellent work, Photo Foodies, and thanks for not calling the site “Foto Foodies.” I know it must have been a temptation.

You can read the entire post here. These are the tenets of the code: Continue reading →