loyalty

Occupy Eduardo Saverin

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

Too bad for Severin that they don’t make students read this any more.

You use the culture, markets, resources and freedom of the United States to turn your innovation into a fortune, and when your nation needs you, more than ever, to contribute your fair share to address its serious economic crisis, you decide to flee to foreign shores.

 That’s Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin.

Despicable.

Occupy Wall Street and its offspring engage in slander and bigotry by characterizing all wealthy, successful individuals as selfish leeches, but their stereotype fits Saverin like a wetsuit. As his company is poised for a public offering and his shares in it are about to lay golden eggs, he has decided to give up his citizenship, and his tax obligations, to live in luxury in Singapore. This will save him at least 67 million dollars in taxes, and probably more. His lawyer-spokesman says that the timing of Saverin’s exodus is coincidental; he just had an overpowering desire to live in Singapore.

Right.

Well, good riddance. The U.S. needs his money, and had a right to it, but it doesn’t need him. He is an ungrateful, greedy and selfish wretch, and richly deserves to be remembered as this generation’s Philip Nolan, “The Man Without A Country.”

__________________________

Facts: Bloomberg

Graphic: Barnes and Noble

Ethics Alarms attempts to give proper attribution and credit to all sources of facts, analysis and other assistance that go into its blog posts. If you are aware of one I missed, or believe your own work was used in any way without proper attribution, please contact me, Jack Marshall, at  jamproethics@verizon.net.

Ethics Dunce: France

/ Jack Marshall / 37 Comments

France

France doesn’t seem to comprehend it yet, but it is embarking on an uncharted and dangerous journey by installing a leader whose lifestyle argues for the irrelevance of marriage.

Valérie Trierweiler, the partner of France’s newly-elected president François Hollande, is being referred to world-wide as France’s new, and unmarried, “First Lady.” She seems like a serious, admirable professional, and there are certainly benefits to any nation by having a woman of substance, intelligence and talent at or near the top of that country’s public figures. I know very little about Hollande, but I am assuming that he is qualified for the difficult job he is undertaking, and that he, like Trierweiler, are mature adults who have every right to structure their personal relationships however they please. That assumption, however, requires the omission of the duties of leadership from the calculation. Leaders cannot make personal decisions based only on their own needs, but must make those decisions while acknowledging an immutable and long-proven fact: leaders have a disproportional, almost frightening power to influence, shape and change a culture, and the more successful and popular  leaders are, the greater that power is. Continue reading →

Ethics Hero: The Boston Red Sox

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

Hold onto this one, Derek.

They can’t play baseball very well right now, but the Boston Red Sox*, my home town team, currently in last place in the American League East, knows how to make an ethical and generous gesture of respect and gratitude.

It has been largely forgotten now, but pitcher Derek Lowe was a big disappointment to the Red Sox during the regular 2004 season, barely winning as many games as he lost and pitching to a high earned run average. In the play-offs and World Series, however, Lowe was as good as good as a starting pitcher could be, going 3-0 and winning the clinching games of both the team’s stunning comeback play-off series win over New York and it sweep of St. Louis to win Boston’s first World Championship since 1918.

Tired of Lowe’s inconsistency and unpredictability (he had a reputation of partying too hard, especially on road trips), the Red Sox let him leave as a free agent after the 2004 season. Since 2004 he has been for the Atlanta Braves what he often was for Boston: a sometimes brilliant starting pitcher with a deadly sinkerball, and for the Red Sox, a distant memory. Last season Lowe’s home was robbed, and among the more than $90,000 of baseball memorabilia that was stolen was his Championship ring from that 2004 season. His insurance covered the monetary loss, but the ring, Lowe’s personal symbol of his key role in a Historic sports event, was lost forever.

Last week, when he was in Boston with his latest team, the Cleveland Indians, Lowe beat the Red Sox as a starting pitcher, and later received a message from the Red Sox owners that they wanted to give him something. Then John Henry, Larry Lucchino and Tom Werner, the trio of tycoons who have owned the team for a decade,  personally presented him with a 2004 World Series ring to replace the one that was stolen from his Florida home. Continue reading →

An Unethical and Stupid Blue Line

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

Officer Tasca, defying a police taboo

Police have a hard, crucial and dangerous job, so it is not surprising that the profession has developed a culture of rigidly enforced mutual support, the famous “blue line” that represents order against chaos, with police protecting society from the lawless and the predators, and making solidarity among the components of that line a key element in its strength. I understand why the culture has evolved to be what it is, and why an ethic of unconditional loyalty and trust thrives in police departments. There are times. however, when enforcing the integrity of the blue line serves to undermine it, and the saga of Officer Regina Tasca of the Bogota (New York) Police Department appears to be one of them. Continue reading →

The Los Angeles Times, War, and the Reckless, Arrogant News Media

/ Jack Marshall / 19 Comments

The Los Angeles Times feels that you need to see this photo, and sensationalism has nothing to do with it. No, really.

Our national news media, which is as biased as ever, more untrustworthy than ever, and less professional than ever, is also more self-righteous than ever, which, I suppose, figures. The most recent display of self-righteousness, along with gratuitous recklessness and arrogance, is the Los Angeles Times’ decision to publish photos of American soldiers posing happily next to the bloody mess that had been the bodies of Afghan suicide bombers. The Pentagon asked the Times not to run the photos, for obvious reasons. The mission in Afghanistan is hanging by a thread as it is, our relationship with the government and the populace serially wounded by a series of unnecessary events that placed the U.S. in a terrible light: in January, a video of Marines urinating on dead Taliban soldiers; in February, the botched disposal of copies of the Quaran, and shortly thereafter, the rampage of a deranged U.S. soldier, who went door to door killing Afghan civilians. Such episodes, and the publicity they receive, jeopardize American interests and cost lives, as Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta explained while condemning the Times’ irresponsible decision. Continue reading →

Ethics Quiz: The Purloined Championship Team

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

Within hours of winning a Final Four national championship, a triumphant college coach not only jumped ship and went to another university, the coach took the entire championship squad.

Nobody went nuts about this over at ESPN, however, because the championship was in chess.

Texas Tech chess coach Susan Polgar took her entire all-star squad of seven chess grandmasters from Texas Tech to private Webster University in suburban St. Louis, home to the World Chess Hall of Fame and the U.S. national championships. Polgar is unapologetic for gutting the Texas Tech elite chess program that she built there beginning in 2007 . “The program grew rapidly, and Texas Tech wasn’t ready to grow with the speed of the program. St. Louis today is the center of chess in America. It just seemed like a perfect fit.”

I’m sure it is, but that leads to your Ethics Quiz: Is it ethical for a coach to take a school’s championship team with her when she accepts a position elsewhere? Continue reading →

The Donald’s Dangerous Ethics: Loyalty Trumps Honesty On “Celebrity Apprentice”

/ Jack Marshall / 21 Comments

Your ethics ignorance makes me angry, Donald. You won't like me when I'm angry...

The original version of Donald Trump’s self-promoting  reality show competition “The Apprentice” occasionally created a useful business ethics scenario. Once The Donald started using B-list celebrities instead of real aspiring executives, however, the show deteriorated into ego insanity and the kind of freak show conflicts one would expect with participants like Jose Canseco, Joan Rivers and Dennis Rodman.

Surprisingly, last week’s episode blundered into a substantive, if confusing, ethics lesson. It was Donald Trump’s ethical priorities that were exposed, and as should surprise no one, they are as warped as Trump himself.

I can spare you all the details of the episode, which involved the weird assortment of celebs breaking into two teams to see who could devise the better commercial for Entertainment.com, as judged by the website’s execs. As usual, the losing team’s leader and the two team members fingered by her (in this case) had to have a show-down with Trump in “the Board Room” to determine who would be on the receiving end of Trump’s trademark line, “You’re fired!” This time one of the three potential firees was none other that  old Incredible Hulk himself, Lou Ferrigno, who has distinguished himself this season as a perpetual whiner, especially adept at blaming the members of his teams rather than accepting responsibility himself. He was richly deserving of the Trump pink slip in this episode, especially for the over-the-top violent and disparaging language he leveled at a female team mate, comedian Lisa Lampanelli. In the eyes of Trump, however, Lou clinched his demise not by being an unprofessional boor, but by being…honest.

“Who do you think had the better commercial?” Trump asked the former green alter-ego of the late Bill Bixby. It sure didn’t sound like a trick question. Ferrigno responded that the winning team’s commercial was better, an eminently reasonable response given that he and the other two celebrities on the hot seat were there because the commercial they had crafted had been judged as inferior. This, however, was seen by The Donald as a rank betrayal. He fired Lou, in part for his slug-like performance on the assigned task, but mostly, he said, for Ferrigno’s “great disloyalty” to his team.

Whaa? Continue reading →

“Dear Legal Ethicist: I’m a Lawyer, and I Think My Real Estate Client Might Be Jack the Ripper. What Should I Do?”

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

Here is a perfect example of where legal ethics and ethics diverge.

The Supreme Judicial Court of Maine reprimanded veteran Maine lawyer Eric B. Cote for investigating the background of Rory Holland—leading a “one man crusade” was how the court put it— after Holland  was convicted of a double murder and sentenced to two life sentences. Cote was convinced that Holland was a serial killer, and that there were other victims. Cote set out to find out who they were.

What’s wrong with that, you ask? Well, Cote had represented the convicted murderer in a real estate transaction. The reasons he suspected Holland came from information he learned in the course of the representation, and under the ethics rules of every state, he cannot reveal such information for the benefit of others to the detriment of a current or former client. Continue reading →

Ethics Hero: —Wait For It—Rush Limbaugh!

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

No, not for that!

For this:

Odd...one would think that a bed company would be familiar with this expression. Well, NOW it is!

After Rush Limbaugh’s personal attack on Sandra Fluke for her testimony before some House Democrats generated furious backlash and activist threats of boycotts of his sponsors, Sleep Train, which calls itself  “the No. 1 Bedding Specialist on the West Coast, and most recognized mattress retailer in the region,” announced that it was ceasing its advertising on Limbaugh’s daily radio show. It had been a national sponsor for 25 years. “As a diverse company, Sleep Train does not condone such negative comments directed toward any person,” the company said in a statement. “We have currently pulled our ads with Rush Limbaugh.”

Sleep Train is, to use the vernacular, a corporate worm. It began advertising with Limbaugh when it was a small company, and he has treated it well. At a moment when the talk show host was under attack by political opponents who want to get him off the air and be free of influential political commentary that often spears their cherished objectives, the company not only abandoned Limbaugh but kicked him when he was down. It was also deceitful about it: while it’s announcement sounded unequivocal, in fact it had only suspended its ads rather than withdrawn as a sponsor. Continue reading →

Ethics Dunce: Sen. Olympia Snowe

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

To the left-biased media (in other words, almost all of it), a Republican who votes like a Democrat is an automatic hero, and can do no wrong. That is why, perhaps, Maine’s GOP Senator Olympia Snowe received nothing but accolades and sympathy when she suddenly decided not to run for re-election, citing the increased polarization in the Senate. Ignored and largely unmentioned in the national media is how this decision and her timing of it betrays her party, her staff, and Maine itself.

In announcing her decision, she said,

“As I have long said, what motivates me is producing results for those who have entrusted me to be their voice and their champion. I do find it frustrating, however, that an atmosphere of polarization and ‘my way or the highway’ ideologies has become pervasive in campaigns and in our governing institutions.”

Never mind, for the nonce, that for moderates to withdraw from polarized political bodies only makes them more polarized: Good plan, Olympia! Let’s concentrate on the first part of that selection. “What motivates me is producing results for those who have entrusted me to be their voice and their champion.”  Really, Senator? Then why in the world did you go out of your way to violate that trust, by doing the maximum damage possible to your party, your staff and your constituency in your manner of leaving? Continue reading →