resignations

Ethics Quote Of The Week: The Washington Post

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

off-the-hook

“Resignation Lets Obama Off The Hook”

—Headline on a Washington Post front page feature on Department of Veteran’s Administration Secretary Eric Shinseke’s resignation on Friday, May 30, by reporter David Nakamura.

I almost called this an unethical quote, rather than putting it in the broader, kinder category of a statement that raises ethics issues.

The headline is unethical in the sense that it indicates once again what I have long decided is the case: the news media, journalists, editors and reporters, couldn’t identify most ethics issues if you painted one orange and hung it around their necks. Has anyone at the Post heard of the principle of accountability? That is, accepting that you are responsible for what has gone wrong under your management as well as what has gone right? President Obama has been shameless in taking bows for the few accomplishments his sad administration can legitimately claim, such as the killing of Osama bin Laden, which was the result of an ongoing operation to which his primary contribution was in not lousing it up. Sometimes, as in his  jaw-dropping foreign policy speech at West Point last week, Obama recasts his nonfeasance and misfeasance as success, as he did regarding U.S. handling of the Ukraine, Syria and Iran. When his leadership really produces a pratfall, however, the reflex Presidential response has been to blame Republicans, or George W. Bush.

This has been, in fact, the attempted spin on the VA scandal. The inconvenient facts in making that case: 1) Obama promised to fix the VA ; 2) the scandal involved possible criminal activity on his watch; and 3) his appointed Secretary’s response was Obama-like, in that he acted as if he was a casual, uninvolved bystander in the mismanagement of his own department.

Isn’t it obvious to the Post, the headline writer, everyone, that nothing Shinseke did, from resignation to a self-immolating mea culpa to seppuku could “let Obama off the hook” for a catastrophe of this magnitude,  in his Administration, under his leadership, delegated to a man he appointed? How can anyone who understands anything about accountability, leadership and management think that? Continue reading →

Good!

/ Jack Marshall / 36 Comments

Carney

Breaking news:

Jay Carney has resigned as Presidential spokesman.

Observations:

  • It would be nice if the reason stated was that he had lost all credibility by virtue of his evasive, deceitful, and often flat-out dishonest answers to the press. Of course, that won’t be the case.
  • Is he the most dishonest press secretary ever? That’s hard to say. Would it be possible for one to be more dishonest?
  • I knew Ron Ziegler, the much-maligned press secretary through much of the Nixon administration. I would trust Ron before I would trust Jay, who would have been a perfect fit for Tricky Dick.
  • PresumablyCarney has a job lined up. Who would trust this guy, who was accurately described as a paid liar? I wouldn’t believe a thing he wrote or said. Nor would I hire him even if he personally was an honest individual. An honest individual who nonetheless lies and deceives the American public to keep his job has no integrity, and is a coward as well.
  • Yeah, it’s a tough job. So is hit man.

Everyone says Jay Carney is a hell of a nice guy. There are a lot of nice guys I wouldn’t trust, and he’s one of them.

Good riddance.

 PS: I wrote this a year ago.

 

 

 

Martin Bashir Resigns From MSNBC

/ Jack Marshall / 40 Comments

You can read details here.

Well, It's about time.

Well, It’s about time.

It has been about two weeks since MSNBC talking head Martin Bashir said, on the air, not spontaneously but reading from a script, that Sarah Palin deserved to have someone shit in her mouth. I have previously commented on the incident and its aftermath here, here, here and here, which is more than Bashir is worth.

Briefly…

  • Bashir should have been fired. That would have asserted that MCNBC had standards of civility and professionalism. This suggests it has none, at least when a conservative is the one being abused on the air.
  • He should have been fired immediately. Late is sometimes better than never, but it is also significant when a network, faced with an employee who engages in objectively outrageous conduct that doesn’t merely cross the line, but pole vaults across it, appears to be pondering, as in, “Hmmmm. How bad is it, really, when a host suggests that someone hold down a former vice-presidential candidate and defecate in her mouth? Tough one! What’s your take, Lou?”
  • Bashir’s producer and editor should have been disciplined, if not fired as well.  Continue reading →

Rep. Radel Needs To Resign

/ Jack Marshall / 30 Comments

 

'Bye.

‘Bye.

From the New York Times:

“Representative Trey Radel, Republican of Florida, pleaded guilty on Wednesday to a misdemeanor charge stemming from his purchase of cocaine here last month.He was sentenced to one year of probation. According to documents released by prosecutors, the federal authorities learned this fall that Mr. Radel, a freshman legislator, had bought cocaine on several occasions for his own use in Washington and had sometimes shared it with others.”

In marked contrast to that other cocaine-using public official to the north, Congressman Radel cooperated with police, has said all the right things, and has taken full responsibility for his actions. Now all that is left for him to do is resign. Law makers must not be law breakers. He can be as contrite and sincere as the sky is blue, but every second he remains in his office, he disgraces and sullies his position and his nation.

He can begin a much-needed trend, and re-establish the principle of accountability for elected officials. And he should look on the bright side. On “House of Cards,” the Netflix political drama starring Kevin Spacey, when a Congressman belonging to his party resumed his cocaine habit, House Majority Whip Spacey murdered him.

Now that’s strict.

How Not To Quit Your Law Firm

/ Jack Marshall / 21 Comments
"Bye! Come see me at my new firm! Just follow the trail of embers..."

“Bye! Come see me at my new firm! Just follow the trail of embers…”

The legal world is buzzing and tittering over a remarkable exit memo sent to firm clients and others by a disgruntled and departing partner at Ogletree Deakins. His detailed version of the events leading to his bitter good-bye was unusual enough that it was leaked to Reuters, and subsequently published elsewhere on the web. In legal circles, it is pretty viral at this point. Why? Because the author is a prominent employment lawyer, and the memo is the epitome of airing dirty laundry, burning bridges to ashes, and throwing a stink bomb on the way out the door…in short, it’s unprofessional conduct, and extremely so.

The diatribe begins with sensational allegation of management misconduct (but without names attached…these are lawyers, after all): Continue reading →

Ethics Heroes: ABC 7 (Bangor, Maine) News Anchors Cindy Michaels And Tony Consiglio

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

[ To those who wonder why I am posting at Ethics Alarms when it’s 4:37 on Thanksgiving morning, I can only note that when you’re staying in a hotel in Baltimore and hacking your guts out with the world’s slowest moving chest cold, and your wife is asleep and your Jack Russell makes it clear it is either walk him or face the consequences—and with that breed, the consequences can mean anything from an unpleasant deposit in your suitcase or ground glass in your next meal, you’re going to be up for a while. A surprising number of prostitutes out around Fayette Street this time of night….and they were all more interested in Rugby than they were in me.]

When it comes to quitting on the job, there is the Steven Slater method, and then there is this.

Embroiled in various disputes with station management, the news team for ABC’s affiliate in Bangor, Maine (WVFX), Cindy Michaels and Tony Consiglio, decided to resign on the air, at the conclusion of the nightly news broadcast, without informing their soon-to-be ex-bosses. Normally I would frown at such a stunt as unprofessional, and I expected the pair’s performance to have a “take this job and shove it” flair. It did not. Their tone and execution was note perfect, saying good-bye and thank-you to their audience, community and staff, and barely hinting at any discord behind their departure at all, though one would have had to be a low-information voter not to surmise it. Michaels said afterward that the two had “figured if we had tendered our resignations off the air, we would not have been allowed to say goodbye to the community on the air and that was really important for us to do that.” Here was their farewell Wednesday night:

Continue reading →

Ethical Quote of the Month: Gen. David Petraeus

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

“Yesterday afternoon, I went to the White House and asked the President to be allowed, for personal reasons, to resign from my position as D/CIA. After being married for over 37 years, I showed extremely poor judgment by engaging in an extramarital affair. Such behavior is unacceptable, both as a husband and as the leader of an organization such as ours. This afternoon, the President graciously accepted my resignation.”

—-Gen. David H. Petraeus, Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, in a public statement announcing his resignation from that position.

How quaint.

Democrats and Republicans must have felt that they had stumbled into the Way-Back Machine and delivered into England circa. 1904. A high government official resigning over adultery, sex,…”personal misconduct?” How bizarre! Naturally, Sen. Diane Feinstein, who heads the Senate Intelligence Committee,  announced that she would have supported Petraeus if he had chosen to stay. “I wish President Obama had not accepted this resignation, but I understand and respect the decision,” she said in a statement, and described Petraeus’s resignation as an “enormous loss for our nation’s intelligence community and for our country.”

The right way to leave after an affair, apparently, is to try to cover it up, submit to extortion, corrupt others in the process, and only quit when the hideout is surrounded, the hounds are clawing at the door and someone is yelling at you through a bullhorn—you know, like former GOP Sen. John Ensign, who waited two years to resign while his colleagues, like Feinstein, looked the other way. Nobody gets it in Washington—“it” being the ironclad principle that leadership must set the highest example, not the lowest level it can get away with, or the whole system rots below. Nobody, apparently, except the man who just resigned. Continue reading →

Another Sexting Pol: Drawing the Lines

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

"ARRGH! I didn't consent to THAT!"

From today’s  New York Daily News:

“Garden State Democrat Louis Magazzu announced his resignation Tuesday after nude pictures he sent to a woman he had been corresponding with were posted on a Republican activist’s website. At least two of the photos showed the Cumberland County freeholder’s crotch, two showed him dressed to the nines in a suit, and a fifth showed him waist up without a shirt.“

Comments and observations:

  • Magazzu didn’t have to resign, but it was right for him to do so. Sexting is a problem among high school students, and it doesn’t help to have elected representatives indulging in it. He was humiliated by publication of the photos, and because the humiliation extended to his constituents and his party, resigning quickly was an appropriate, honorable, courageous thing to do—as it would have been for Bill Clinton, Sen. David Vitter, ex-Sen. Ensign, ex-South Carolina Governor Sanford, and others. He didn’t have to resign, however. Continue reading →

Return to a Sore Subject

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

"Does anybody care?"

[NOTE: An unusually busy travel schedule combined with terrible hotel WiFi and a week that was already stuffed with juicy and provocative ethics stories resulted in my not fulfilling my duties very well the last three days, for which I apologize sincerely. I’m going to make every effort to catch up this weekend.]

Rep. Weiner resigned at last, noting that his district and its constituents deserved to have a fully functioning representative in Congress, and that he could no longer fulfill that role. True enough, though one has to ask (or at least I do): if the people of Queens and Brooklyn deserve better representation than a hard-working, if dishonest, obsessed and twisted, pariah can offer, what about the people of the 8th District of Arizona, who have a representative who can’t funtion in her post at all?

I was going to wait until the six-month mark in Gaby Giffords’ rehabilitation to raise this matter again, since that will mark a full 25% of the Congresswoman’s term that she has been unable to serve, but the combination of Weiner’s resignation and the news of Giffords being released from the hospital created too much dissonance for me to ignore. I fully expect that I will be writing some version of this post 18 months hence, after Rep. Giffords’ entire Congressional term has passed without her voting on a bill or answering a constituent’s letter. To quote the singing John Adams in “1776,”: “Is anybody there? Does anybody care?”

Reports from various medical personnel enthused that Giffords has made remarkable progress, and “seems” to understand “most’ of what is being said to her, though she still has trouble articulating responses. That is great progress for someone who has some of her brain blown away by a gunshot at close range, but it sure doesn’t sound like someone who is going to be making a persuasive argument on the House floor any time soon, or ever. So are we serious about this running the country stuff, or aren’t we? Continue reading →

As Weiner Finally Goes, Some Lessons That We Already Should Know

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

I’m sitting in the Washington, D.C. offices of  NPR, waiting to go live at 11 AM. with some ethics commentary about the imminent resignation of Rep. Weiner. He is finally doing the right thing for the wrong reasons, just as his Democratic colleagues are defenestrating him for the wrong reasons. Once yesterday’s old photos surfaced showing Weiner in women’s underwear, his fate was sealed…although it was really sealed already. His forced resignation was inevitable, and the fact that the Congressman was unable to see it so that he could preserve some shred of honor by doing his duty as soon as his disgraceful conduct became public shows how wretched his judgment is.

The 56% of his constituents who, according to polls, thought that he should remain in his job demonstrated their complete lack of understanding of the requirements of leadership and ethics. They weren’t the only ones. It has been fascinating, though depressing, to read the comment threads on various websites and blogs covering the Weiner story, because they are so similar in their rationalizations. The categories, and reasons why they are so misguided, are:

  • “Lots of the people criticizing Weiner engage in dubious inline conduct themselves; they are hypocrites.” No, they are non-leaders. When you accept the responsibility of leadership, you accept the duties of  integrity, honesty, and honorable conduct. Rep. Weiner gave up the right to behave as sleazy as the guy we never heard of next door when he ran for office. Continue reading →