integrity

How Not To Promote Tolerance and Understanding of Muslim Culture

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

Here is how it works: When a Muslim couple sets up television station specifically for the purpose of advancing understanding and tolerance of Muslims in America, the couple also creates a duty to further that goal by  their own personal behavior. It would be more damaging for the proprietors of a station with such an important goal to be implicated in a terror plot, for example.  Muslims doing so while claiming to be devoted to bridging the chasm of distrust between America and Islam would make the chasm deeper, perhaps deeper than the usual, garden variety Radical Islamic terrorist plot.

Another no-no for such a couple, I’d say: the husband stabbing the wife to death and cutting off her head. Continue reading →

“The Ethicist” Nails A Rationalization

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

I have often been critical of Randy Cohen, the New York Times Magazine’s longtime writer of “The Ethicist” column. This distorts, I fear, Randy’s performance, for he is right far more often than he is wrong, and he is usually right with wit, humor and clarity.

As an effort to balance the scales a bit, I want to salute “The Ethicist” for explaining, concisely and lightly, what is wrong with one of the commonly used rationalizations for unethical conduct: “If I don’t do it, someone else will”:

Responding to a man who felt that it was wrong to take a job facilitating his industry’s outsourcing of jobs overseas, Cohen assured him that there was nothing unethical about the assignment. He then added,

“That is fortunate, because your wife’s argument — if you don’t do it, someone else will — would not justify nefarious conduct. Someone else will do pretty much anything. I’ve met ‘someone else,” and he’s quite the little weasel.”

Well said.

Egypt Ethics: Integrity Deficit on the Right

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

It has been fascinating and troubling listening to conservative radio talk-show host Mark Levin lambast fellow conservatives who have been siding with the revolutionaries trying to end the 30 year rule of Hosni Mubarak in Egypt. Levin argues that such support is foolish and ignorant, because there is no way for the United States to be sure that the resulting new government, even if it is more democratic than the current one (hardly a difficult bar to clear), wouldn’t be worse for the interests of the United States. Continue reading →

Eroding Public Trust: Obama and General Electric’s “Appearance of Impropriety”

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

The fact that an official act appears to be sensible and fair does not necessarily mean that it is ethical.

Consider the EPA’s waiver of the new global warming regulations for a stalled power plant project in California. Officials reviewed EPA policies and decided it was appropriate to “grandfather” projects such as the Avenal Power Center, a proposed 600-megawatt power plant in the San Joaquin Valley, and thus exempt them from new federal limits on greenhouse gases and conventional air pollution. The Avenal Energy project, explains Environment and Energy News, is a combined-cycle generating plant consisting of two natural gas-fired General Electric 7FA Gas Turbines with Heat Recovery Steam Generators (HRSG) and one General Electric Steam Turbine.

Translation: It is a huge G.E. contract.

Hmmmm. Continue reading →

Dear ESPN: I Know She’s Hot, But Fire Erin Andrews

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

…or at least suspend her. Show us that a male-dominated sports network can have a modicum of journalistic ethics, and won’t behave like a drooling traffic cop giving a buxom babe a pass for running a red light because she bats her eyes and flashes some cleavage.

You did the right thing in early January, when one of your broadcasters abused a female colleague in a sexist manner; some would say—certainly the fired Ron Franklin—that you reacted a little precipitously, but you are clearly taking a strong stand against gender bias in the workplace, and that’s commendable. Still, don’t you know that what your pin-up, “Dancing With the Stars” reporter Andrews did was far worse? Continue reading →

“American Idol” Jumps the Ethics Shark

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

Just four audition episodes into the new “American Idol,” it is obvious that the show is done. It might hang on for a few, even several more seasons; after all, “Happy Days” continued for almost a decade after Fonzie jumped the shark. But it’s still over, and it wasn’t because the show lost its center and star, the acid-tongued, irresistible Simon Cowell…well, not exactly. It didn’t have to be the case, but when Simon left, the show lost the one thing it has to have–integrity. Continue reading →

Ethics Hero: Gil Meche

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

[ Finally reduced to hunt-and-pecking blog posts from an Arlington, VA. Starbucks as the result of a still-ongoing power outage at the Marshall home-office, I apologize for an uncharacteristically quiet day.]

All Kansas City pitcher Gil Meche needed to do to collect $12 million in 2011 was to show up, do his best to pitch—which his ailing right arm would no longer permit him to do—and cash the checks. But despite having an iron-clad contract (the last in a long-term deal he signed as a free agent), Meche decided to retire, thus ending the contract and forfeiting the money. Continue reading →

Time to Enforce the Hatch Act on Karl Rove

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

The Hatch Act is a 1939 law that prohibits the use of federal money to support political causes. It’s an important law that many presidential administrations have nicked, dinged and outright violated,  without enforcement or consequences. But a thorough report by an independent federal agency shows that the Bush White House routinely violated the Act by creating a “political boiler room” that coordinated Republican campaign activities nationwide.

The report by the Office of Special Counsel finds that the Bush administration’s Office of Political Affairs, overseen by Karl Rove, served  as a virtual extension of the Republican National Committee, developing a “target list” of Congressional races, organizing dozens of briefings for political appointees to press them to work for party candidates, and sending cabinet officials out to help these campaigns. This included helping coordinate fund-raising by Republican candidates and persuading Bush  political appointees to help with Republican voter-turnout efforts.The report was based on over 100,000 pages of documents and interviews with eighty Bush administration officials in a three year investigation. Continue reading →

Comment of the Day: “College: the Worst Consumer Scam of All?”

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

From Michael, responding to the post on a recent book’s conclusions about today’s college students, their study habits and achievements based on several surveys and studies:

“This is not surprising at all.  It is only surprising to those who close their eyes, plug their ears, and hum really loudly when any concerns like this are raised.  Student achievement has been falling so fast, it is ridiculous.  I can see the difference year to year.  Students aren’t required to study much, are not challenged, and are taught to ‘think’ by people who believe the word ‘think’ means ‘repeat everything I say’. Continue reading →

Ethics Dunce Follow-up: Justice Thomas’s False Disclosures

/ Jack Marshall / Leave a comment

From the New York Times:

“Justice Clarence Thomas of the Supreme Court acknowledged in filings released on Monday that he erred by not disclosing his wife’s past employment as required by federal law.
Justice Thomas said that in his annual financial disclosure statements over the last six years, the employment of his wife, Virginia Thomas, was “inadvertently omitted due to a misunderstanding of the filing instructions. To rectify that situation, Justice Thomas filed seven pages of amended disclosures listing Mrs. Thomas’s employment in that time with the Heritage Foundation, a conservative policy group, and Hillsdale College in Michigan, for which she ran a constitutional law center in Washington.” Continue reading →