honesty

Jaw-Dropping Lie of the Year: Nancy Pelosi

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

“And we did all of this while restoring fiscal discipline to the Congress by making the pay-as-you-go rules the law of the land.”

–—House Speaker, soon to be Minority Leader, Nancy Pelosi in a Nov. 9 op-ed in USA Today, listing the achievements of the Democratic Congress under her leadership.

The pay-as-you-go rules, which require new spending  to be offset with new revenue or spending cuts, were adopted by the House in 2007 and became law in 2010. Significantly, the very same bill that established pay-as-you-go—or PAYGO—raised the debt limit by $1.9 trillion. Signed into law on Feb. 12,  PAYGO was waived less than two weeks later when the Senate voted for a $15 billion job creation bill.…that was not offset by new revenue or spending reductions.

In fact, the PAYGO rule is waived constantly: it was designed that way. Continue reading →

Theft, Disrespect and Retribution: the “Cook’s Source” Debacle

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

This is another example of how ethical insights can emerge from the most unlikely episodes, as one obscure website stole material from another, and ignited web vigilante justice on a grand scale.

Medieval  food expert and enthusiast Monica Gaudio learned from a friend that the e-magazine Cook’s Source had taken her online article about the origins of apple pie and reprinted it without her permission. Assuming it was an innocent error, Gaudio wrote the site and requested an apology, as well as a $130 donation to the Columbia School of Journalism to make amends for what was a blatant copyright violation.

The managing editor at Cook’s Source, Judith Griggs, didn’t recognize a generous and reasonable offer when she saw one. Instead of proper contrition for taking Gaudio’s work without permission, Griggs decide to go for a new high in arrogant defiance, writing…

“Yes Monica, I do know about copyright laws. … But honestly Monica the web is considered ‘public domain’ and you should be happy we just didn’t ‘lift’ your whole article and put someone else’s name on it! It happens a lot, clearly more than you are aware of, especially on college campuses, and the workplace. If you took offence and are unhappy, I am sorry, but you as a professional should know that the article we used written by you was in very bad need of editing, and is much better now than was originally. … We put some time into rewrites, you should compensate me!”

Seldom are so many ethics fouls packed into so few words. Note that: Continue reading →

Ethics Advice to Joe Miller: At Least Lose With Integrity

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

Republican Senate candidate Joe Miller, who helped sink his candidacy by stonewalling and dissembling about his misconduct while working as a municipal attorney, is now trying a Hail Mary law suit to stave off a write-in victory by current GOP Senator Lisa Murkowski.

Miller has asked a judge to stop the state from making a judgment on a voter’s intentions if the voter wrote in something other than “Murkowski” or “Lisa Murkowski.” Alaska is about to start counting the more than 92,000 write-in ballots cast in last week’s election. The state counted about 27,000 absentee and early votes Tuesday, and at the end of the day, Miller remained 11,333 behind the write-in total.

The Alaska law covering write-ins states:

“A vote for a write-in candidate, other than a write-in vote for governor and lieutenant governor, shall be counted if the oval is filled in for that candidate and if the name, as it appears on the write-in declaration of candidacy, of the candidate or the last name of the candidate is written in the space provided.”

Miller’s argument embraces the dubious theory that a misspelled name isn’t the name it’s intended to represent, even if it is obvious who the voter intended to vote for. Such an interpretation would make it disproportionally difficult for candidates not named “Smith,” “Brown,” or, naturally, “Miller” to prevail as write-in candidates, and nearly impossible for candidates named Zbigniew Brzezinski, Carl Yastrzemski, or, just to pick a name out of a hat, Lisa Murchowski. Or Murkowski. Whatever.

In other words, it is unfair, and an effort on Miller’s part to undermine the intent of the voters and the democratic process so he can achieve a dirty, unprincipled, undeserved victory. If  Tea Party enthusiasts like Sarah Palin, who promoted Miller’s misbegotten candidacy, believe in core American values as much as they claim to, they need to shut down Miller’s disgraceful law suit by informing him that he’s embarrassing himself, the movement, his party, and Alaska.

Again.

Olbermann’s Donations: A Breach of Ethics Policy, But Not Unethical

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

I’ll make this short, but I can’t pass up the chance to come to MSNBC host Keith Olbermann’s defense when he deserves one. It may never happen again.

Politico is reporting that Olbermann made campaign contributions to two Arizona members of Congress and losing Kentucky Senate candidate Jack Conway beforeTuesday’s election , which is a violation of NBC ethics policies.

Olbermann made the maximum legal donations of $2,400 apiece to Conway and to Arizona Reps. Raul Grijalva and Gabrielle Giffords.  Grijalva appeared as a guest on Olbermann’s “Countdown” show the same day that Olbermann made the gift. NBC, like most news organizations, has a policy against employees contributing to political campaigns on the theory that it indicates a breach of journalistic independence and a lack of objectivity.

Yes, Keith broke the rules of his employer. That is wrong, no matter what the rule is, and justifies whatever punishment NBC deems appropriate.

The rule, however, is itself unethical, because its objective is to deceive the public into believing that reporters who are anything but objective, are. It isn’t a contribution that makes a reporter partisan and biased, it is wanting to make the contribution that shows his bias, whether he makes it or not. The rule prohibits reporters acting in a way that alerts the public to what their biases are. But I want to know what they are. Don’t you? Continue reading →

The David Manning Liar of the Year: Tim Kaine

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

Democratic Party National Chairman Tim Kaine’s insulting, damaging and dumb performance before the media in the days leading to the election warrant a brief revival of a monthly award regularly handed out on Ethics Alarms’ predecessor, The Ethics Scoreboard. It is the David Manning Trivial Liar Award, and since I handed the last one out here almost exactly a year ago, I may have to make it a yearly tradition. As I wrote on November 3, 2009, shortly after this blog debuted,

“The David Manning Trivial Liar” highlights the public lies nobody could possibly believe. It was named for Sony’s “defense” when it was revealed that the movie critic, “David Manning,”  whom they advertised as raving about lousy Sony films like “The Animal” (Starring Rob Schneider as a guy who accidentally has animal DNA grafted…oh, never mind…), was a fake invented by their marketing division. Sony said, in essence, that it was no big deal because everyone knows those critical raves in movie ads are mostly lies anyway. I didn’t carry the feature over to Ethics Alarms, because the kind of transparent, shameless, “I’m going to say this anyway even though it will have America rolling its eyes” lie the feature was designed to condemn didn’t come around every month.”

It sure came around this month. Continue reading →

Obama’s “Enemies,” Pat Caddell, and the Cognitive Dissonance Misdirection

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

The Cognitive Dissonance Misdirection (CDM) is as old as politics. I’ve written about it here before, but finally have decided that it deserves a formal name–especially because it has been shamelessly employed by news media attempting to minimize, obscure or bury legitimate criticisms of Barack Obama and his Administration.

Cognitive dissonance is created when something an individual feels strongly about is associated in some way with something else. If the individual strongly likes, admires, or desires the first thing, cognitive dissonance will draw the second thing into his favor. If the individual intensely dislikes the first thing, he will begin to feel more negatively toward the second thing now linked to it. This why, for example, popular celebrities get product endorsement deals, and unpopular ones don’t. When Denzel Washington or George Clooney says he likes a car, people start liking the car too. If the same car were endorsed by, say, Lindsay Lohan or O.J. Simpson, a lot of people would assume it was a lemon…and they might not even realize why. Cognitive dissonance works its influence subliminally, and that’s why it is such an effective tool of persuasion…and bias.

The media’s version of this has been perfected over the last two years. When a legitimately troubling comment, action, incident or gaffe reflecting badly on the President, his Administration, or his staff occurs, the mainstream media has often not reported the issue straight, as in “This happened,” or “Obama said this,” but by immediately linking the story to the President’s presumably biased adversaries—Republicans, conservatives, and talk radio—and making the criticism the story, as in, “Republicans are attacking President Obama’s  communications director Anita Dunn’s comments that seemed to praise Mao Zedong.” The fact that a high-ranking White House figure praising the greatest mass murderer in history, even in jest, is news, and should be criticized by Left and Right, was muted by the reporting of it. Continue reading →

Why Obama’s Party Is Going Down

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

The excuses are already coming fast and furious as President Obama and his party faces a rebuke in Tuesday’s election of historic proportions. The lack of accountability so far may be forgivable; after all, nobody admits they have done a lousy, hypocritical, incompetent and dishonest job while they are running for re-election. The voter’s fury and the Democrats’ peril are being blamed, alternatively and collectively, on George Bush, on Sarah Palin, on racism, on the sad stupidity of the American public, who just are so impatient and unsophisticated that they don’t comprehend all the wonderful things that have been done for them.  It’s also the Supreme Court’s fault for allowing large corporations the right of free speech, although the union money flowing to Democrats as the result of the same decision has dwarfed corporate money.

All of these excuses are demeaning to Obama and his party, and insulting to the intelligence of everyone else.

The reason the Democrats are going down to a party that had thoroughly disgraced itself out of power just two years ago, is illustrated by a shocking report that barely caused a ripple in the news cycle. Continue reading →

Ethics Hero: Jon Stewart

/ Jack Marshall / Leave a comment

When Jon Stewart announced his “Rally to Restore Sanity on the Mall” in support of a return to civility and moderation in politics, many, if not most, assumed that he would be hosting a boisterous, funny, pointedly partisan rally in favor of progressive policies, with the secondary objective of putting the Tea Party movement in its place—sitting in a corner wearing a dunce cap. Continue reading →

Eliot Spitzer, the Harvard Club, and Blackball Ethics

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

Eliot Spitzer, we have learned, has been blackballed by the New York City Harvard Club. Although over 11,000 graduates of the august institution are members, and the club, which is always seeking funds and rejects an application about as frequently as its alma mater plays a decent football game, nonetheless found Spitzer wanting.

Is this a surprise to anyone? There are only a few reasons to join the Harvard Club or even tolerate it, unless one has an unhealthy affection for the stuffed heads of things Theodore Roosevelt shot, many of which are hanging on the wall. The main reason is prestige (and to let visitors know that you graduated from Harvard without having to say so). A club, by its very nature, suggests some degree of exclusivity; one’s cache from belonging to a club derives from its members. I can imagine a rational person feeling some sense of pride in belonging to a club of Harvard graduates. I cannot imagine a rational person feeling any special sense of exclusivity emanating from membership in a club that includes Eliot Spitzer. Continue reading →