San Francisco

More Evidence That Nobody Gives A Damn

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

If you can’t rely on quality control and professionalism at a major league baseball park, then the end is nigh.

At San Francisco’s AT&T Park Wednesday night, the batter’s box was apparently drawn by a drunk groundskeeper, and looked like this….

Bad field

 

…when it’s supposed to look like this, which is to say, with straight lines:

Batters box

 

Nobody noticed…not the players, not the umpires, not the managers. Oh, the broadcasters mentioned it, but even though the chalk did not meet the regulation requirements, no effort was made to put it right. On The Blaze, which picked up the story from Yahoo Sports, the baseball-dense commenters’ general response was “Who cares?”  Yeah, keep that attitude up, bozos, it’s probably how you do your job too.

Fans pay from $45 to $100 bucks a ticket for games at big league baseball stadiums, and the clubs rake in many millions of dollars. A batter’s box like that is the equivalent of a new Lexus with a rattle, a 5-star restaurant that never can serve a souffle before it falls, a public school teacher who says “ain’t,” nurses who don’t wash their hands and a Congress that can’t pass a budget. It’s unprofessional. It’s an insult to the consumers. It demonstrates incompetence, laziness, poor training and bad management. And if we tolerate it, the attitude will spread and get worse.

Yes, it’s “only” the chalk lines of a batter’s box. But that’s not the way they are supposed to be, and “professional” is supposed to mean that the way things are supposed to be is the way they will be.

Does anyone in this country know that any more?

________________________________

Sources: The Blaze, Yahoo!

 

Now THAT’S An Appearance of Impropriety!

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments
Why is this woman smiling?

Why is this woman smiling?

Juliet Ellis is the assistant for external affairs at the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission at a salary of $195,000 annually. She is charged with, among other aspects of her duties, implementing the agency’s new environmental justice and community benefits policies.

She also, her public disclosures reveal, is the salaried chair of Green for All, an Oakland-based nonprofit, which trains disadvantaged minorities in energy-related work. The Commission—that is, the commission that Ellis works for in an influential position—awarded a $200,000 no-bid contract to Green for All—which Ellis chairs for compensation—to train people for city jobs.

Fancy that. Continue reading →

Hypocrite…or Lawyer?

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

"After we're done, darling, let's discuss your sexual harassment suit. I think you have a good case!"

This story probably will strike you as a bit odd.

Prosecutors have charged a 50-year-old lawyer, Robert Michael Hoffman of San Francisco, with rape after complaints from four women who told police he assaulted them when they answered his Craigslist ad for rough sex. The prosecutors say that he assaulted at least three of the four women  and engaged in rape, sexual battery, forced oral sex and one count of false imprisonment.

The odd part? Hoffman practices employment law , specializing in sexual harassment cases. Sexual harassment law is explicitly designed to ensure that employees are not exploited, debased or discriminated against because of their gender.Needless to say, rape, sexual battery and  forced oral sex would qualify as extreme sexual harassment. Continue reading →

When Law Professsors Attack!

/ Jack Marshall / 38 Comments

On his excellent blog “The Ethical Lawyer,” Franco Tarulli sounds a perceptive, and unusual, ethics alarm.

On January 11, 2011, there was another botched police raid at the wrong house, this time in the San Francisco suburb of Castro. Police had apparently given a mistaken description of the house that was supposed to be raided when they sought the warrant. As a result, innocent law professor Clark Freshman was put in handcuffs and scared out of his wits, as police ignored his objections that they had the wrong house. Continue reading →

Happy Meal Ethics and the Heart Attack Grill

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

The Heart Attack Grill, in Phoenix, Arizona, has a medical theme, in keeping with its name. Waitresses dress in skimpy nurses’ uniforms; customers, who come to gorge themselves on super-high calorie fare like Double Bypass Burgers and lard-fried french fries, wear hospital gowns over their clothes and are referred to as patients. The menu features no diet drinks. The new “model” for the Grill is Blair River, a former high school wrestler who stands 6 feet 8 inches tall and weighs 600 pounds (he’s also a financial adviser at the University of Phoenix.) River now has a $100-an-hour contract to pose for ads and TV commercials for the establishment, including a recent YouTube video which invites anyone over 350 pounds to eat for free. And, apparently, if you are over 500 pounds, they pay you. Continue reading →

Ethics and the San Francisco Pet Ban Proposal

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

San Francisco is considering accessing its inner PETA by enacting a ban on a the sales of any pet with fur, hair or feathers, meaning that little Scotty will have to make do with a boa constrictor, an iguana or a guppy if he wants a non-human companion to cheer him through grade school. The measure began as a ban on pet store sales to stick it to unscrupulous puppy mills, then gradually morphed into a nearly China-like proposal  to ban almost all pets. True, the city’s proposal would still allow the adoption of dogs and cats from shelters, but don’t bet on that being the final result. PETA-ism, once it gains a foothold, won’t be satisfied until we are all tofu-sated and pet-free.

A Los Angeles Times story on the public debate over the ban concentrated on the business angle, for pets are big business. This is, however, an effort by the city government to set ethical values and standards, a legitimate government role when  necessary and reasonable. Protecting innocent and vulnerable animals is an important government function; the question is whether it is necessary to protect animals from those who love them as well as those who abuse them.

Well, why not? There are slippery slopes all over this issue, in all directions. Laws ban the sale of exotic animals like tigers, wolves and chimps in many jurisdictions, because keeping them in private captivity is viewed as inherently cruel. Hmmmm…more cruel than keeping Shamu in that small tank? More cruel than keeping a polar bear in a Washington D.C. zoo? The logic for banning birds and small mammals as pets is pretty much the same: it’s inherently cruel. Does the life of a hamster deserve as much protection as the life of a leopard? Why stop at hamsters, then?

Are ant farms cruel? ( I know what happened to mine, and I don’t want to talk about it…) Continue reading →

The Arizona Boycotts: Unethical and Unjustified

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Washington D.C., Boulder, Boston, St. Paul, Austin, El Paso, Oakland and San Diego have all announced a boycott of Arizona, which stands condemned, in their view, of “violating basic American principles,” “Draconian law enforcement,” “promoting racism,” and “un-American measures.” All this, for announcing that the state is going to enforce a law long on the books that the Federal government stubbornly fails to enforce itself.

Almost all boycotts are unethical, and this one doesn’t come close to being fair or reasonable. Boycotts use economic power to bend others to the will of large groups that disagree with conduct or policy, bypassing such niceties as debate, argument, and rational persuasion. They can be effective, but they always depend on causing harm to third-parties, bystanders and others not directly involved in the decision that prompted the boycott, thus creating pressure on decision-makers to change direction based on considerations that have nothing whatsoever to do with the underlying controversy. It is a bullying tactic, and the only way it can pass ethical muster is if the reasons for it are clear, strong, virtuous, undeniable, and based on irrefutable logic that the boycott target is so wrong, and doing such harm, that this extreme measure is a utilitarian necessity. Continue reading →

Outing the Judge

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

“Judge Being Gay a Nonissue During Prop. 8 Trial” says the San Francisco Chronicle headline…outing the judge in the Proposition 8 trial as gay.

If it the judge’s sexual orientation is a non-issue, why does the paper believe it is ethical to reveal it? Continue reading →

Ethics Hero: England World Cup Team Coach Fabio Capello

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

Just when I find myself staring disconsolately at the vast expanse of snow, thinking about how futile it is to try to sweep back the ethical apathy and self-serving tolerance for bad conduct that is burying our values as a blizzard buries a garden, along comes Fabio Capello, from the unlikely world of soccer, to give me hope.

Capello gets it. Mere days from his team’s embarking on the annual World Cup quest, he sacked his star Defender, John Terry, as team captain. Continue reading →

Bizarro World Ethics in Denver and San Francisco

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

Compassion and kindness don’t always lead to ethical decisions. Sometimes they cause decisions that are irresponsible, unfair, and misguided, not to mention dim-witted. An example presented itself last night, as voters overwhelmingly defeated a Denver City Council initiative that would require police to impound cars driven by unlicensed drivers. The key reason for the measure’s defeat, apparently, other than the fact that all the unlicensed drivers and their families voted against it, was widespread acceptance of the criticism that the measure would disproportionately affect illegal immigrants.

Actually, the same argument could be made about the law against driving without a license. Arresting those guilty of beating their spouses bloody will disproportionately affect men. Seems discriminatory, doesn’t it? Crimes of violence are overwhelmingly committed by those who are poor and uneducated; it is discriminatory to enforce those laws, right, Denver? Arresting drunk drivers is unduly burdensome on alcoholics and their families, too, and alcoholism is a disease. How barbaric!

The logic of Denver voters is ethically backwards, a Bizarro World version of fairness where core public interests—safety, law enforcement, citizenship— are seen as less important than  empathy for the non-citizens who break laws.

548 people died in Colorado traffic accidents in 2008. Drivers without valid licenses were involved in crashes that killed 130 of them. That’s 24 percent; not surprisingly, unlicensed drivers are also lousy drivers. They are also uninsured drivers. And they don’t worry so much about things like drinking while driving, because nobody is going to take away licenses they don’t have. Impounding the vehicles of drivers without licenses is an obvious, effective and sensible method of getting unlicensed drivers off the road, and will stop some people from dying. It is true that illegal immigrants are more likely to be on the road without licenses, because illegal immigrants can’t get licenses. That is completely their own responsibility, however. They were not forced to break the immigration laws, and nobody is making them drive illegally, either. Impounding vehicles doesn’t discriminate against illegal aliens; it discriminates against law-breakers, which is exactly what  laws are supposed to do.

Empathy and compassion are important ethical values. We should be compassionate to everyone, even criminals. Clarence Darrow, the great criminal defense lawyer, believed that being a criminal, no matter how vile, was always the result of accidents of birth and bad luck: wrong genes, wrong parents, no chance at education, wrong friends, wrong neighborhood, and a lack of good options. His perspective is worth remembering, but even Darrow didn’t argue that we should allow law-breakers to go on breaking the law. Yes: “There but for the Grace of God go I.” If I had been born poor in Mexico instead of Boston, I might be an illegal alien in Denver today. I might even have decided that I have to drive without a license, because it was the only way I could work. And if I did that, and was stopped on the road, I absolutely would deserve to have my car impounded. Whatever the solution to the illegal immigration problem is, forbidding enforcement of the laws illegal immigrants tend to break on the basis that it would pose a special hardship on them is not it. It is, instead, a prescription for anarchy, bad policy, harm to innocent citizens, and public anger.

Denver isn’t the only city getting its ethical priorities confused. Urged by its incorrigible, ethically-muddled mayor, Gavin Newsome, San Francisco police are easing up on  a policy that requires officers to impound the vehicles of drivers caught without  licenses, and based on the same logic as Denver’s compassionate voters. Taking away their cars will be really burdensome on illegal immigrants…

…who are in the state and city illegally in the first place…

…who have no right to drive or use the roads…

…but whose welfare should take precedence over the safety of legal citizens, in the Bizarro World ethical calculations of San Francisco officials and Denver voters, because punishing criminals unfairly discriminates against…criminals.
Ethics has to have a firm foundation in common sense and logic, or it becomes emotion and slogan-driven nonsense.