integrity

Primary Ethics: Good and Bad Results for Civic Diligence

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

The tendency of American voters to hand over the reins of power to the sons, daughters, and wives of popular or successful leaders simply because they shared a last name, a bed or some DNA has always been an embarrassment, proof of the most unfortunate aspects of democracy when it is driven by civic laziness rather than diligence. Beneficiaries of this generations-long deficit in seriousness and responsibility include presidents (Adams, Bush); U.S. Senators (Kennedy, Gore, Clinton, Bayh,**), representatives (Kennedy, Bono, Jackson…), and governors (Bush, Bush…). Some have performed well, some not so well, but all of them were initially elected because voters knew their names, and illogically ascribed to them whatever it was that they admired about their family members, regardless of experience, qualifications, or evidence of governing skill.

In Tuesday’s primaries, voters rectified one especially egregious example of this phenomenon, and committed a new one. Continue reading →

Obligation or Charity: Retired Baseball Player Pensions and Fairness

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

It is an old ethical problem: what is “fair”?  If you help someone, are you obligated to help everyone? Does charity have to be consistent to be fair? Does a potential beneficiary of generosity have a right to demand it? It is obviously good for those who are fortunate and successful to share the benefits of their success with the unfortunate and less successful, but is it unethical if they choose not to?

These are some of the ethics issues being raised in a controversy launched by the major league baseball veterans, now retired, who played  between 1947-1979. In those days, when free agency was just beginning and top players made six-figure salaries rather than seven or eight as they do now, a player needed four full years of  time on a big league roster to qualify for  medical benefits and an annuity. In 1980, however, new rules put in place by the Major League Baseball Players Association  granted health insurance benefits to those with just one day of service, and a pension after merely six weeks. The new benefits were not retroactive. Continue reading →

Politics, Ethics, and the Idiot Problem

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

Kim Lehman, who is one of Iowa’s two national Republican Committee members, responded to Politico’s report last week about the large and, oddly, increasing number of Americans who believe that President Obama is a Muslim, with this tweet:

“@politico You’re funny. They must pay you a lot to protect Obama. BTW, he personally told the muslims that he is a muslim. Read his lips.”

When Lehman was asked by the Des Moines Register what speech she was referring to, she cited an Obama speech in Cairo last summer in which he reached out to Muslims “to seek a new beginning.” In that speech, Obama made no comment about being Muslim. In fact, he said he was a  a Christian, saying,

“…Now part of this conviction is rooted in my own experience. I’m a Christian, but my father came from a Kenyan family that includes generations of Muslims. As a boy, I spent several years in Indonesia and heard the call of the azaan at the break of dawn and at the fall of dusk. As a young man, I worked in Chicago communities where many found dignity and peace in their Muslim faith. As a student of history, I also know civilization’s debt to Islam.”

Never mind that, Lehman said; the speech still “just had the appearance that he was aligning himself with the Muslims.” Continue reading →

Summer Rerun: “Ending the Bi-Partisan Effort to Destroy Trust in America”

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

[TV is full of reruns these days, and sometimes I am grateful for them, for it gives me a chance to see episodes of favorite shows I had missed for some reason or another. Back in early March, I posted the following essay about the origins of America’s current crisis of trust in our government, and how it might be cured by our elected leaders. Since then, the crisis has deepened, and as I was doing some routine site maintenance, I reread the post. It is still very timely (unfortunately), and since far fewer people were visiting Ethics Alarms in March, I decided to re-post it today, with just a few minor edits. I promise not to make this a habit. Still, trust is the reason why ethics is so important in America: if there is a single post of the more than 700 I have written here since October 2009  that I would like people to read, this is it.] Continue reading →

“Hyping,” Reporting, Responsiblility, and Race

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

On Aug. 6 in Washington, D.C., a violent brawl broke out among  70  people, most of them teenaged or close to it, at the Gallery Place Metro Station.  There were arrests, and several people landed in the hospital. Pitched battle in the usually staid D.C. subways are not daily occurrences, yet the Washington Post apparently found itself short-handed, faint of heart, or both: its initial and follow-up stories on the event had little information. What started the fight? What happened? Who were the combatants? How long did it last? Continue reading →

Proposed Rule: Unethical Politicians Have To Be Dumb, Too

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

Smart unethical politicians can do a lot of harm; it may be years or decades until the public catches on to them, if ever. But unethical politicians who are not so bright do everyone a favor. They don’t know how to cover their misconduct; they often don’t even realize it is misconduct. With luck, they flag both their lack of ethics and their shortage of gray matter while they are running for office.

Take Bessemer, Alabama  Councilwoman Dorothy Davidson, who is running for mayor of the city. Continue reading →

Dr. Laura Schlesinger, Ethics Chicken

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

Dr. Laura Schlesinger turned tail and ran last night, telling CNN host Larry King that she was quitting her radio show in response to the manufactured controversy following her repeated use of the word “nigger” to quote (with complete accuracy) what could be heard from black comics on HBO. “I want to be able to say what’s on my mind and in my heart and what I think is helpful and useful without somebody getting angry, some special interest group deciding this is the time to silence a voice of dissent and attack affiliates, attack sponsors.” she told Larry. “I’m sort of done with that.” Continue reading →

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 →

A Commercial for Liars: Tide..with Acti-lift!

/ Jack Marshall / 110 Comments

Yes, Procter and Gamble, makers of Tide laundry detergent, thinks lying is cute, and that Americans will run out and buy a product advertised as useful for assisting lies.

And who knows? Maybe they’re right. We certainly wouldn’t expect a corporation or an ad agency to see anything wrong with lying, since it is business as usual for them. They probably don’t even realize such messages are corrupting.

The new TV ad for Tide and its new “Acti-Lift” secret ingredient (It’s called “Closet Raid”; you can see it here…) shows the heart-warming saga of a teenage girl who trustingly asks her mom whether she borrowed a favorite green blouse. Continue reading →

Ethics Hero: The New York Times

/ Jack Marshall / Leave a comment

The most transparent and open presidency in history, or so we were once promised, just shattered that illusion further by inviting a dozen White House reporters to a lunch with President Obama. The New York Times, to its credit, did the ethical thing and declined.

You see, the reporters were required to promise that anything they saw and heard at the lunch would be “off the record,” even, presumably, information that the “public has a right to know.” Continue reading →