incompetence

“Congratulations! Here’s a Bonus for Doing Such An Outstanding Job Investigating That Fiasco That Happened Because You Screwed-Up In The First Place!”

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

"Iolanthe's" Lord Chancellor has nothing on me: his nightmare* was only "love unrequited." Mine is the SEC.

[  I read about the following outrage before going to bed last night, and vowed to write a post on it in the morning. It literally gave me nightmares and an upset stomach, so disrupting my repose that I gave up and headed to the keyboard. I am writing this at 4:30 AM. I have never written anything at 4:30 AM before, but I have learned something useful for future reference: I’m not in a good mood then.]

And here we have a prime example of why 1) many people don’t trust the Federal government and 2) why they are 100% right to feel this way.

I’ll take “Incompetence, Failure of Accountability and the Appearance of Impropriety” for a thousand, Alex!

SEC  Inspector General H. David Kotz has issued a thorough report on the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, revealing that an employee who investigated Bernie Madoff in 2005 and 2006 and failed to notice that he was running a $50 billion Ponzi scheme was later rewarded by the agency with a cash bonus…for his fine work on the Madoff scandal after it was discovered, the lives ruined, the damage done. Continue reading →

Incompetent Elected Official of the Week: Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Tex)

/ Jack Marshall / 22 Comments

“I do not understand what I think is the maligning and maliciousness [toward] this president,” said Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, a member of the Congressional Black Caucus. “Why is he different? And in my community, that is the question that we raise. In the minority community that is question that is being raised. Why is this president being treated so disrespectfully? Why has the debt limit been raised 60 times? Why did the leader of the Senate continually talk about his job is to bring the president down to make sure he is unelected?”

Unbelievable.

As is often the case, and is especially often the case with Lee, we are faced with the puzzle of deciding whether an irresponsible and unfair statement by an elected official arises out of a conscious exercise in cynical and dirty politics, or because the elected official involved is just dumb as a box of pet rocks. In this case, my guess would be “both.” Continue reading →

Incompetent Elected Official of the Week: Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich)

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

Is he the dumbest Representative? Let's hope so.This is perhaps the ethical equivalent of shooting fish in a barrel (which, come to think of it, isn’t very ethical), since Rep. Conyers has been displaying his rank incompetence in word and deed for decades (he was first elected in 1964). It was Conyers, after all, who during the health care reform bill debate last year not only admitted that he hadn’t read the bill, but ridiculed the notion that anyone would expect a House member to read such a complex, wide-reaching piece of legislation before voting for it. I might suggest that the Congressman is suffering the mental ravages of age, but  a) that would be age discrimination and 2) he doesn’t deserve an excuse. He’s always been like this.

Conyers is also a powerful and high-ranking member, so his special brand of cluelessness is neither harmless nor cute. It is useful, however, at least to Republicans looking for the perfect example of the proverbial Democratic Congressman who only knows one way to govern: spend as much money as possible in ways that will line the pockets of constituents and thus guarantee re-election. The Republicans would like the public to believe that all Democrats are like this, which isn’t true. The fact that at least one Democrat is like this, however—not only like this, but candid and proud about it—makes the stereotype much more credible.

Here is what Conyers said this week: Continue reading →

How the Lack of Ethics Cripples Democracy, Reason #1: Ethical Leadership Is Neither Encouraged Nor Rewarded

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

 

How many elected leaders will be responsible when it means risking THIS?

Washington Post Metro columnist Robert McCartney relates the cautionary tale  of Fairfax (Va.) School Board member Liz Bradsher.  The school board, like others across the nation, was required to make some tough choices with its resources scarce and stretched to the breaking point.  The costs of renovating a high-achieving elementary school in the Fairfax County countryside  didn’t pass an objective, cost-benefit analysis, so the board voted to close it. Bradsher, whose district includes Clifton, the neighborhood served by the school, was expected to vigorously oppose the move.  But after studying the costs and enrollment forecasts, she reluctantly concluded that it made more sense to shutter the facility so the county could spend scarce renovation dollars where they would benefit more children.

She did what was best for the Fairfax community as a whole, which, as an elected official, is her duty. But rather than appreciating the courage it took to agree to close a beloved institution in her district for the greater good, she is being attacked. Anonymous postings on a popular local website have spread false rumors that she has a drinking problem and that her marriage is on the rocks. She is receiving threatening letters, and obscene e-mails.   Continue reading →

A Psychic Ethics Train Wreck in Liberty County

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

Surprise: her anonymous tip is not credible.

I have been remiss in not discussing a recent Ethics Train Wreck that occurred two weeks ago, a fiasco that occurred in Liberty County, about an hour from Houston, Texas.

A self-professed psychic who calls herself Angel called police and told them that she had a vision that a mass grave containing the dismembered bodies of children was on the property where Joe and Gena Bankson lived. She also described some of the features of the property. That was enough for the Liberty County Sheriff’s Office, which armed itself with a search warrant and cadaver-sniffing dogs and converged on the home,  along with a mob of reporters and two news helicopters. As the police dug holes, somebody jumped the gun, and soon cable news stations flashed alerts that up to 30 bodies had been found.

There were no bodies. Continue reading →

Sorrell v. IMS Health: Legal, Ethical, and Unjust

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

The case of Sorrell v. IMS Health, which the Supreme Court decided yesterday, sharply focuses the philosophical disagreement over the role of the courts in public policy. The legal question was rather straightforward; the ethical issues are complex. Is it the Court’s duty to make bad—but constitutional— laws work, or is its duty to follow the laws, and leave it to the legislature to fix their flaws?

This was a case about incompetent  lawmaking. Gladys Mensing and Julie Demahy had sued Pliva and other generic drug manufacturers in  Louisiana and Minnesota over the labels for metoclopramide, the generic version of Reglan. The drug, used to treat acid reflux, had caused them to develop a neurological movement disorder called tardive dyskinesia. None of the generic drug’s manufacturers and distributors included warnings on the labels about the danger of extended use of the medication, even though the risk was known to them. Neither did the manufacturers of the brand-name drug. The problem was that the state statutes required generic drug manufacturers to included warnings about dangerous side effects, while federal regulations required generic drugs to carry the exact same label information as their brand name equivalent.  Continue reading →

The Judgement Day Leader’s Cowardly Ethics Failure

/ Jack Marshall / 28 Comments

"It is all my fault."

After the catastrophic miscalculation of Pickett’s Charge led to the slaughter of his soldiers and the loss of the pivotal Battle of Gettysburg, Confederate General Robert E. Lee   met the bloody survivors returning from the field of fire, telling them, one by one, “It is all my fault!” To Pickett, whose division was all but wiped out, he said, “Upon my shoulders rests the blame.”

I am no admirer of Robert E. Lee, but this was his finest moment as a leader, and an example for all leaders who are followed in faith and meet disappointment or worse.  I wrote two days ago that Harold Camping, the evangelical broadcaster who proclaimed with absolute, 100%  certainty that his calculations foretelling the end of the world on May 21 were correct, had better be prepared to be held accountable when we were all still here on May 22. He wasn’t. From Reuters:

” With no sign of Judgment Day arriving as he had forecast, the 89-year-old California evangelical broadcaster and former civil engineer behind the pronouncement seemed to have gone silent on Saturday. Family Radio, the Christian stations network headed by Harold Camping which had spread his message of an approaching doomsday, was playing recorded church music, devotionals and life advice unrelated to the apocalypse.” Continue reading →

Bin Laden Aftermath Ethics: Deadly Expediency and Incompetence at the Top

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

Psst! Joe! SHUT UP! You're killing people!

Secretary of Defense William Gates told a group of Marines at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina that the Navy SEALs who took out Osama bin Laden were concerned about their safety and that of their families. And why wouldn’t they be? After all, the aftermath of Osama bin Laden’s death  exposed President Obama’s inner circle, not for the first time, as inept and reckless in the responsibilities and priorities of leadership.

Mere days after the successful raid on bin Laden’s compound, Vice President Biden spontaneously announced the name of one of the men in charge of the SEALs team at a fundraiser in Washington, saying, Continue reading →

NBC Tries a Hit on Trump, and Exposes Its Own Incompetence

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

“Trump Fumbles Abortion Question” trumpeted “The Daily Beast” under the label “Confused”. It caused my heart to leap: could The Donald have stuck his foot in his mouth with an obnoxious-presidential-campaign-flirtation-destroying gaffe so soon?  Callooh! Callay!

I rushed to the link, which was on the NBC News site, only to have my hopes dashed. Trump hadn’t made a gaffe at all. Some biased, ignorant NBC reporter, who has decided that it is her life’s assignment to show the American public just who is and who isn’t qualified to run for President of the United States, tried a deceitful and unfair trick question on Trump, who promptly identified it as such. Then, completely mistaken about her assumption that his answer was disqualifying at all, she smugly sat back while her colleagues in the media attempt to present the exchange as a “gotcha.” In  other words, Trump is going to get the Sarah Palin treatment, and this was the first, jaw-droppingly stupid attempt at it. Phooey! It’s bad enough that I keep having to stand up for Palin; now I have to stand up for—ughhh!–-Donald Trump!

Here is part of NBC’s Vaughn Ververs’ account of the exchange between NBC’s Savannah Guthrie and Trump: Continue reading →

Why We Cannot Trust The News Media, Reason #116: ABC’s Deceptive Video Editing

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

The ABC News version: "I'm going to make him an offer!"

In a fiery speech in budget wars epicenter Madison, Wisconsin yesterday, whatever-she-is Sarah Palin told cheering Tea Party followers,

“If you stand by your platform, if you stand by your pledges, we will stand with you, we will fight with you, GOP, we will have your back. What we need is for you to stand up, GOP, and fight. GOP leaders need to learn how to fight like a girl!”

“Fight like a girl” —that is, like Palin—immediately spread over the internet, one more example of Palin’s uncanny bumper-sticker catch phrase talent. Now here is how ABC’s “This Week with Christiane Amanpour” played the video today:

“What we need is for you to stand up, GOP, and fight. GOP leaders need to learn how to fight—!” Continue reading →