Gov. Sam Brownback

Ethics Dunce: Grandstanding Topeka Waitress Chloe Hough

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

tip the schoolsToday was apparently “Popular Unethical Conduct Day.” This isn’t as bad as a mother having a police officer terrorize her little boy, because governor abuse isn’t as bad as child abuse. It’s still wrong, and in several ways.

Waitress Chloe Hough was in her final shift in her last day as a waitress at a Kansas barbecue restaurant, and found herself serving conservative Kansas governor Sam Brownback. The controversial  Republican  recently pushed to replace Kansas’s education funding system with a  “block grant” program that cuts millions of dollars from  public school budgets.

Hough decided to use the opportunity to make a snarky, meaningless protest comment on his check, and grandstanded by posting a photo of it on Facebook.

“I just knew I had to say something or I would regret it,” she told a TV station.  Of course, she really would have regretted it if she hadn’t already quit her job. She was rude to a customer (wrong), compromised the service of her employer (wrong); embarrassed her employer (wrong);used her job illicitly to make a personal political statement (wrong), and posted the restaurant’s document without permission on Facebook. If the restaurant shares tips among servers, she also gave away money belonging to her colleagues without their permission. Wrong, wrong, wrong.  She did all of this knowing that she wouldn’t suffer any consequences, since she had already quit. It was hit and run unethical conduct, and a cowardly betrayal of trust. The legitimacy of her political critique is irrelevant.

I hope the restaurant withholds her final paycheck, and to any other employers out there, remember that name: Chloe Hough. She’s untrustworthy and disloyal, and if you hire her, you deserve what you get.

Abuse of Government Power+ School Administrator Cowardice = Student Persecution

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

Enemy of the State.

Emma Sullivan, an 18-year-old high school senior at Fairway, Kansas’s Shawnee Mission East High School,  went with her class on a field trip to the Capitol and heard Gov. Sam Brownback speak. She tweeted her reactions to her Twitter followers, writing, “just made mean comments at gov brownback and told him he sucked, in person #heblowsalot”.

The part about making mean comments to the Governor was a lie, but on a scale of believability and damage done, not an especially momentous one. It was adults who turned this unremarkable student tweet into an ethics train wreck in three neat, unforgivable steps.

1. First, some over-zealous hack on the Brownback’s staff saw the tweet and complained to an administrator in the school district. This is a First Degree Ethics Foul. Nothing in Sullivan’s tweet brings it within his, the governor’s or the government’s legitimate concerns. For the staffer to complain was petty, vindictive and mean-spirited. Every second he spent on his vendetta was a waste of taxpayer dollars. Worst of all, he was bringing the power of the government to bear on a teenager for doing nothing more than expressing her opinion, which is that Governor Brownback sucks. I’m sure there have been foreign dictators who would punish a teen for doing no more than telling friends that she doesn’t like him, but I would have thought that someone who works in one of the United States governments would instinctively know that this kind of bullying mind-control isn’t allowed here. I was wrong. Brownback does suck, at least at picking staff. Continue reading →