North Carolina

The Giordano Decision, Sympathy and Malfunctioning Ethics Alarms

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

Sympathy and empathy are wonderful and admirable qualities, but they can mess up ethics alarms but good, causing them to ring out with gusto when perhaps they shouldn’t be set off at all.

This, I’m sorry to say, is what seems to be going on with the public and the media in the wake of a North Carolina judge denying Alaina Giordano primary custody of her two children,  in part because Giordano has Stage IV breast cancer, and in part because she is unemployed. Giordano is upset and nobody can blame her for that. She has also started a website exhorting readers to “Say NO! to CANCER discrimination!” There is a Facebook page (of course) rallying support for her, and it already has over 14,000 fans. An online petition to the governor called “Do Not Allow NC Judge To Take Alaina Giordano’s Children Just Because She Has Cancer ” has more than 75,000 signers.

Yet there is nothing inherently unethical, illogical or unfair about family law Judge Nancy E. Gordon awarding custody of 11-year-old Sofia and 5-year-old Bud to their father, who lives and works in Chicago, rather than to their mother, who lives in Durham, and has breast cancer that is most likely terminal. Continue reading →

ABC News Breaches Its Duty Not To Make The Public Stupid

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

Give generously to save victims of ABC's "This Week."

On ABC’s Sunday public affairs show “This Week,” the usually admirable Jake Tapper breached the broadcast journalist’s duty not to promote logically flawed arguments that will make the public dumber than it already is.

Debating with his guests the merits of Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s efforts to severely reduce the collective bargaining rights of public unions, Tapper cited an intellectually dishonest New Republic article by Joseph McCartin which used data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics to make this statement: Continue reading →

No-Tolerance Idiocy of the Year: Southern Lee High School in Sanford, N.C.

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

Ethics Alarms has not yet completed its annual Best and Worst of Ethics lists for 2010, but I’ll hand out this title right now.  The persecution of student Ashley Smithwick, 17, of Sanford, N.C., has all the elements that make no-tolerance enforcement of school rules ethically offensive: a lack of common sense, absence of proportion, dismissal of empathy, rejection of fairness and justice, disregard for the welfare of an innocent child, and most of all, incompetent, cowardly, utterly stupid school administrators.

Yes, I think we have a winner. Continue reading →

Ethics Fouls and Julian Assange’s Rape Case

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

Well, well, well, Mr Assange!

How does it feel to have your own embarrassing and confidential information leaked to the media and publicized to the world?

On the sound ethical principle that two wrongs doesn’t make a right, The Guardian acquiring and publishing the leaked police report relating to Assange’s rape charges in Sweden is no less unethical because Assange is a smug foe of confidentiality. Nevertheless, it is hard to recall an instance when seeing the tables turned on someone was so satisfying. Ethics foul: Whoever leaked the records, and The Guardian for printing them. But thanks anyway.

It is satisfying for reasons other than delicious irony. 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 →

Ethics Challenge: the Fisherman and the Pole Vaulter

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

Many readers disagreed with Ethics Alarms on its verdict in the women’s track and field tournament story, where the championship-winning pole vault was disqualified after the opposing coach complained that the vaulter was wearing a bracelet, which was specifically banned by the rules. I argued that the rule was clear and unambiguous, that the coaches had the duty of making sure each competitor followed it, and that simply pretending that the rule didn’t exist because the result of enforcing it was harsh was not an ethical option for the referees. The coach who flagged the rules was well within ethical limits by making sure that his team, which obeyed the rules, wasn’t defeated by a team that didn’t, even if the rule violated didn’t help it succeed.

Your challenge, should you choose to accept it, is to explain why this recent scenario, in a very different sport, should be looked at differently from the track meet, or not. Continue reading →

Ethics Dunce: North Carolina Rep. Bob Etheridge

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

This video is remarkable and disturbing.

Rep. Bob Etheridge, (D-N.C.) was walking down a Washington street when he was approached by a student holding a cell phone camera. The young man asked the Congressman about his views on President Obama’s agenda. Etheridge angrily demanded to know who the student was, tried to snatch the phone, and then assaulted and battered him. Continue reading →