responsibility

The Damage of Health Care Reform “By Any Means Necessary”

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

I have no idea whether the health care reform bill, assuming it finally gets passed in one form or another, will make things better or worse, and if you are honest about it, neither do you…and neither, I am certain, do most of the elected representatives who will have voted for it or against it (or for it and against it) by the time the dust clears. To only cite the most obvious proof, the bill’s current form was just posted yesterday, giving Congress 72 hours to read and understand over 2,000 pages of technical jargon and badly-written prose. I don’t believe I have ever read 700 pages a day for three days at any point in my life, and if I have, I know it had to be something more diverting than a health care bill.

Relying on second-hand analysis—also by individuals who haven’t read the current bill—simply puts us (and the members of Congress) at the mercy of the biases of those rendering the opinions. For example, one of my favorite commentators, Robert Samuelson, has persuasive arguments against the bill here and here, while one of my least favorite, Paul Krugman, weighs in on the bill’s virtues here and here. Now, I think Krugman has squandered his credibility by blatant untruths in the past (One howler, his infamous statement about the national health care systems of Canada and Great Britain that “We’ve all heard scare stories about how that works in practice; these stories are false” is derisively quoted almost daily by Wall Street Journal blogger James Taranto as he relays tales of national health care horrors from the London press), but the man has won a Nobel prize: maybe he’s right and Samuelson is wrong. I really don’t know.

I do know this, however: whether the bill proves to be disaster or panacea, the manner in which President Obama and the Democrats have gone about passing it has done real and lasting harm.  Continue reading →

Ethics Dunce: Judge Darrell Russell

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

Domestic abuse is a crime, a social malady and a sickness, one that frequently afflicts both the batterer and the victim. It is an especially infuriating crime to prosecute, because the couple drawn together in an abusive relationship often form bonds that even the threat of injury and death won’t loosen sufficiently to allow one party to testify against the other. Thus domestic abuse goes unpunished more often than not, and some prosecutors have decided that in the interest of society, these cases need to be prosecuted whether the beating victim likes it or not. They are correct. Violence and battery are crimes against the state, not just one individual. There is not much a prosecutor can do, however, when the judge is an Ethics Dunce, prepared to go the extra mile to free a loving couple for future mayhem. This brings us to the case of Baltimore Judge Darrell Russell,who recently charted new waters in judicial abuse of power, arrogance, incompetence, and irresponsibility. Continue reading →

Web Ethics, Due Diligence, and the Happy Maxi-Pad

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

There is no denying it any more. It is per se unethical to pass along information discovered on the web to anyone, much less to put it on a blog or in an e-mail, until you have performed due diligence and determined with reasonable certainty that it is accurate and true.

All the more reason, then, to praise the Snopes “urban legends” website, which does a superb job tracking down and clarifying web hoaxes, rumors and other misinformation. A lot of the latter isn’t even intentional, but the consequences of not checking the facts can still be significant and harmful,

I thought about this after encountering an amusing bit of web lore that many of you may have already seen, on aan old blog post that introduced the piece like this: Continue reading →

Self-Destruction Ethics Alarms: A Woman’s Unethical Quest For Fat

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

Yesterday, the world heard about Donna Simpson, a New Jersey woman who weighs in at about 500 pounds. She sasy she wants to be the fattest woman alive, and is managing her diet and exercise to achieve that lofty goal. Of course, all those Twinkies and pork rinds cost a lot of money—her weekly grocery bill averages more than $800—so she earns extra cash by putting herself on Gluttoncam, or whatever she calls it, where freakophiles can watch her gorge herself online for a reasonable fee. Her partner, the news reports say, is completely supportive. “I think he’d like it if I was bigger,” giggles Donna. “He’s a real belly man and completely supports me.”

Okaaaaay….

Obviously this situation is unusual…at least, I hope it is. Still, it raises many difficult ethics questions, some with broad implications:

  • We are told that it is cruel, greedy and heartless for insurance companies to withhold coverage for “pre-existing conditions,” and should be compelled to insure everyone without regard to special risks. Does this apply to Donna Simpson? Continue reading →

Ethics Dunces: Prof. Peter Tague and Chief Justice John Roberts

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

In today’s world of text-messaging, Twitter, Facebook and e-mail, intentionally throwing a rumor into a crowded room is only marginally better than falsely shouting “Fire!” in a crowed theater. Thus Ethics Alarms regretfully has to pronounce Georgetown Law Center professor Peter Tague’s puckish stunt of last week irresponsible and unethical.

Demonstrating how unreliable it was to accept media accounts from un-named sources, Prof. Tague told his first year law class that he had learned from a “reliable source” that Chief Justice John Roberts was about to announce his retirement. Some nimble-fingered Twitter-user (or many) promptly sent the rumor into cyberspace, where it rapidly found its way onto scoop-hungry websites, especially those made giddy by the prospect of President Obama having the chance to replace one of the Supreme Court’s most conservative judges with a progressive one. By the time Tague announced to the class that his “scoop” was a fraud, just thirty minutes later, the fake story was multiplying like a virus. Continue reading →

“Raving Private Gump”: Tom Hanks Lets Political Correctness Eat His Brains, and Gets Called On It

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

I am a big fan of Tom Hanks’ work as an a comic, a dramatic actor, a producer, and in drag, but he has been reliably attached to what may end up being the most infuriating quote of the year. If not the most infuriating, then at least the most ignorant and irresponsible.  In an interview with historian Douglas Brinkley in a Time magazine feature about his upcoming HBO series on World War II in the Pacific, Hanks said this:

“Back in World War II, we viewed the Japanese as ‘yellow, slant-eyed dogs’ that believed in different gods. They were out to kill us because our way of living was different. We, in turn, wanted to annihilate them because they were different. Does that sound familiar, by any chance, to what’s going on today?”

If you are not now running in circles, wide-eyed and screaming, you should be. Continue reading →

Honoring O.J.: Your Tax Dollars at Work

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

We haven’t had an example of jaw-droppingly incompetent, outrageously irresponsible teacher behavior for a while, so this story from the Associated Press is timely, if not welcome.

Three Los Angeles elementary school teachers gave children portraits of O.J. Simpson, Dennis Rodman and RuPaul to carry in a Black History Month parade. Honest. The teachers have been removed from their classrooms, and investigation is pending. All the teachers were white men, and the classes involved were first, second and fourth grades. Continue reading →

Ethics Heroes Odd Couple: Sen. Jim Bunning and the Washingon Post

/ Jack Marshall / Leave a comment

“The point Mr. Bunning was trying to make was a reasonable one: At some point, Congress has to stop borrowing and spending, even for worthy purposes.”

This wasn’t Rush Limbaugh talking, or some Fox News talking head. This was the Washington Post, in an editorial, validating the Kentucky senator’s lonely stand in which he single-handedly placed a five-day “hold” on a $10 billion bill to pay for extended unemployment benefits and other popular programs.

Bunning’s symbolic protest was vilified by the Democrats and disowned by most Republicans. As the Post editorial pointed out, it was “spectacularly bad politics,” giving the Democrats a perfect foil to symbolize the heartlessness of “the Party of No.” Courage and principle are often, and perhaps, sadly, always bad politics. Continue reading →

Premature Ethics Alarm on Obama’s Judicial Appointment

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

Republicans are sounding an ethics alarm tonight.

“Obama Now Selling Judgeships for Health Care Votes?” shouts the Weekly Standard website, and it’s clear The Standard thinks it knows the answer. After all, as the President was meeting with ten House Democrats who voted against the health care bill in November,  the White House sent out a press release announcing that Obama had nominated Scott M. Matheson, Jr. to the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit. And the nominee’s brother,  Rep. Jim Matheson of Utah, is one of the recalcitrant ten.

Hmmmm. Looks shady, no? Continue reading →

Nancy Pelosi and Forced Virtue

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

I’m sure my friend and colleague Bob Stone will forgive my picking on a casual phrase he used in a comment on the previous post, for it is the inspiration for this one, and it involves the important issue of forced virtue.

Bob alluded to Speaker Nancy Pelosi finally doing “the right thing” when, as reported in the morning media, she told House Ways and Means Committee Chair Charles Rangel that he had to resign his post because of multiple ethics violations. Pelosi, we now know, had avoided this for as long as possible, first ignoring Rangel’s actions, then making the dodge that the Ethics Committee first had to make its ruling (Rangel’s egregious violations have never been in doubt), then suggesting that the violations were not significant (knowing that among them was a failure to pay taxes on $75,000 of income as well as acquiring hundreds of thousands of dollars of unreported—that is, hidden—income, all on the part of the reigning chair of the committee that oversees tax legislation) because the country wasn’t “jeopardized” by them. But now the press is calling for Rangel’s head, the Republicans are making accusations that seem, for once, reasonable, and other Democratic House members have joined the chorus demanding that Charlie must go. And this is all occurring as Pelosi is trying to martial her House majority as she attempts to ram the latest health care reform package past the nation’s gag reflex.

In short, Pelosi isn’t really doing the right thing. She’s doing the only thing. Continue reading →