Medicare

The Sunday Morning Horror: ABC Shows Us Why Ethical, Perceptive Voters Are In Despair

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

this-week-with-george

You have to congratulate ABC’s This Week with George Stephanopoulos today for managing to demonstrate, within a 45 minute span, everything that is currently wrong with the Presidential race, and the current front-runners:

First George interviewed Donald Trump, who, as always, said nothing of substance, declared that what he would do as President would be wonderful, gave no specifics whatsoever about how he would “be great for the blacks, bring all those jobs back from China,” and showed that his versions of law, logic and ethical reasoning are infantile…BUT did it with cockiness and flair, which is apparently good enough for millions of people. He  mainly rambled on about how Chief Justice Roberts has been “a disaster,” demonstrating that he assesses judges like interior decorators: if you like the result, they did a great job. Trump cited Ted Cruz’s support for Roberts’ nomination, and  Stephanopoulos didn’t have the wit to point out that Cruz wasn’t elected to the Senate until 2012, whereas Roberts was confirmed in 2005.

Actually, the Cruz-Roberts connection is that Cruz recruited Roberts, whom he knew as a Supreme Court law clerk, for George Bush’s legal team during the 2000 election controversy. Bush won that election, you will note, so in that case, Roberts seems to have been a good choice. I suspect that history will look at Roberts as an unusually skillful Chief Justice who managed to keep an unusually fractious court in line, and squeezed a lot of unanimous decisions out of a group that easily could have been dysfunctional.

When the host pointed to an old video in which Trump appeared to endorse the concept of “New York values,” Trump repeated his stunt that worked so well during the debate, waxing on about the city’s response to 9-11. I can understand why Cruz didn’t make this point, but a competent interviewer is obligated to: “Wait, sir, are you saying that New York City reacted any differently or more courageously to that tragedy than Charleston responded to the church shooting or the people of Oklahoma City responded to its bombing? Surely you know that Sen. Cruz was talking about liberal social values, not typical American resilience in the face of tragedy?” Continue reading →

Tales Of Ethics Dunces Past: Recalling the Self-Indulgent Suicide of Hunter Thompson

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

I can’t claim that I am surprised that my post about the suicide of Don Cornelius attracted comments that either showed a misunderstanding of what I wrote or a stubborn determination to change the subject. It was not a post about the virtues of suicide, but about how suicide’sethical calculations may be changing as a broken medical care system increasingly makes the final years and months of the elderly a burden that crushes families and constricts the quality of life  for the nation generally. In short, killing yourself for your country may have to become an accepted practice, an ethical and courageous act, if something doesn’t change. Killing yourself for yourself—to avoid pain, problems, or the consequences of your own actions, should always be considered wrong, for wrong it is.

Jeff Hibbert, one of my favorite contributors here and also one with a great memory, reminded me that I had written on this topic once before. I had forgotten, but that post may be a useful contrast to the Cornelius post. There is not a word of it that I don’t still believe. It concerned the 2005 suicide of Hunter S. Thompson, the cult “gonzo journalist” who lived like frat boy and  wrote like angel. Here it is:

Hunter Thompson’s values were admittedly always a little out of whack, but nothing diminished the self-styled “gonzo journalist” in this world so much as his manner of leaving it. He shot himself to death last February while talking on the phone to his wife, with both his son and grandson in his house with him. Nice. That should guarantee some lucky psychoanalyst or three a comfy income for the foreseeable future. Continue reading →

Don Cornelius, Suicide…and Ethics Hero?

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

“Soul Train” creator and pop culture icon Don Cornelius took his own life at 75 yesterday, using a gunshot to the head to do it. Suicide always conjures up feelings of special sadness for the deceased, sometimes mixed with anger. The act can be cruel and devastating to family members and friends; often it leaves behind crushing problems, financial and otherwise, that the living have to deal with. Suicide is stigmatized in our culture as a coward’s way out of earthly problems; many religions consider it a sin, and many legal systems consider suicide a crime. Yet it may be that American culture will have to undergo a major cultural transformation in the matter of taking one’s own life. While morality tends to ossify, ethics is fluid and adaptable. Changing conditions and new realities can, in rare circumstances, cause societies to conclude that what was once considered right is really wrong, and what was once condemned as wrong is in society’s best interests. I think we may reach that point with suicide. Continue reading →

A Frightening Figure, Setting Off Ethics Alarms

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

We don't even know how to play Russian Roulette responsibly.

On Friday, the day before Christmas Eve when much of America was thinking about sugar plums,  lay-away plans, and protesting Christmas pageants, the Federal Accounting Office released its analysis of  the net present value of the nation’s Social Security and Medicare obligations, “net present value” being  the total funds that would have to be set aside today to pay the costs of these programs in the future. Seldom do figures so clearly indict the unethical practices and statements of so many.

In fiscal 2011, the cost of the catching up on the required funding of Medicare and Social Security rose from $30.9 trillion to $33.8 trillion. That $2.9 trillion increase should be regarded as adding to the $1.3 trillion cash deficit for fiscal 2011, making a $4.2 trillion deficit—and this coming in a year in which the rising national debt was supposedly recognized, at last, as a threat to America’s stability, prosperity, and welfare. The costs of Social Security and Medicare are rising at a frightening rate, nearly doubling in the last decade, with little or nothing being done to address the problem. And there is good reason to believe that the Medicare estimates are based on unrealistic assumptions. The GAO report also includes an alternate, less rosy scenario (or perhaps “more putrid” is a better phrase) in which the projected Social Security-Medicare debt is more than $46 trillion. How serious is that? Well, the combined value of the equity in U.S. homes and the value of all publicly-traded companies is less than 20 trillion dollars.

What do these figures tell us about the ethics of the various players on the national scene? Continue reading →

Robert Samuelson’s Brilliant, Ethical, Hopeless Proposal

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

Great idea, Robert. Too bad it requires courage and honesty.

I don’t generally regurgitate other writers’ essays, but in this case I am making an exception. Robert Samuelson, rare among op-ed columnists in that he is a truth-teller without party bias, has a column today that proposes a joint act of integrity and heroism by Barack Obama’s immediate predecessors. His idea, if implemented, could have a major impact on breaking the impasse in Congress that threatens the nation’s future. It could be accomplished without bureaucratic red tape, and is profoundly responsible and ethical. And it would burnish the legacies of two former presidents who could use some burnishing.

Will it happen? Never. That’s the disturbing part. 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 →

Unethical Website of the Month: Bloomberg News

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

Seldom does any news media organization make its absence of fairness and objectivity on a topic so obvious that there isn’t some room for argument, but Bloomberg managed to scale the heights with its headline to a story by reporter Heidi Przybyla. Her report covered the results of a Bloomberg poll designed to create a profile of the members of the Tea Party movement, which has been holding multiple demonstrations across the country to protest passage of President Obama’s health care reform bill.

The poll results themselves were unremarkable, given what we already have learned about the Tea Partiers’ objectives and objections. Over 90% of those polled by Bloomberg said that they feared that the nation was turning to socialism, with the federal government trying to control too many aspects of  Americans’ lives. In answer to another question,  70% felt that Obama’s Administration needed to put more resources into job creation. So Przybyla, her editors and Bloomberg’s management chose to headline the report with this:

“Tea Party Advocates Who Scorn Socialism Want a Government Job” Continue reading →