Archive for the ‘Ethics-general’ Category
June 11, 2011
When my car won’t start I’m an innocent. I always guess it’s the battery, and usually I’m right, but that’s the extent of my automotive knowledge. So when the Brent Air Towing /AAA truck answered my call this morning I was prepared to shell out $100 to $150 for a new battery.
Brent’s serviceman, Adolfo Jimenez, lifted the hood, looked intently at the battery, then gave me a quick and easy jump start. To my surprise and relief he told me I didn’t need a new battery, just run the engine until the battery was recharged.
I thanked him and told him how relieved I was not to need a new battery. His response:
“I could have told you you needed a battery, and you wouldn’t have known any different, but that wouldn’t be right. I’ve always tried to be professional and have ethics, whether training horses or mopping floors or rescuing stranded drivers.
“The important thing in life is to be happy. You can be happy with one dollar, or you can be unhappy with a million dollars.
“If you’re ethical, and if your children see you’re ethical they don’t say, ‘I want to be like Batman or Superman.’ They say ‘I want to be like dad.’ That’s happiness.”
Thanks for the lesson, Adolfo. I’ll use it in my next business ethics class.
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Tags:AAA, Brent Air Towing, Business ethics, ethics Adolfo Jimenez, happiness, professionalism
Posted in Business ethics, Ethics-general | Leave a Comment »
June 9, 2011
If you’re a Democrat and you want an ethics pass, go see Melanie Sloan, Executive Director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. Today she discussed the Anthony Weiner mess with MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell. Her analysis:
“It’s hard to see what the [House] Ethics Committee would hang its hat on here to say that this conduct would violate the ethics rules. Others have said maybe it’s the lying. What! So no politician has ever lied to us before? That’s the kind of thing we see all the time. So he did behave discreditably (!!) but I don’t think it’s enough for a full fledged ethics censure. David Vitter is still there.”
I wonder what kind of behavior Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington would consider irresponsible or unethical.
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Tags:Anthony Weiner, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, CREW, David Vitter, ethics, House Ethics Committee, Lawrence O’Donnell, lying, Melanie Sloan
Posted in Ethics-general, Government, Media | 1 Comment »
June 9, 2011
Maybe it’s time to change our opinion of ex-Senator George Allen (R-VA). In 2006 he became a poster child for racial insensitivity (to put the best face on it) when he called a heckler at a town hall meeting “macaca.”
Now he wants his seat back and faces a tough fight against former governor Tim Kaine. The last thing he needs is a primary challenge from the tea party right. But that’s what Allen risked when he brushed off suggestions that he leave the Aldersgate United Methodist Church after it opened its multi-purpose room to a local mosque that needed prayer space while its new facility was being built.
Church pastor Jason Micheli has been slammed by Mike Huckabee and others for his ecumenical spirit, and several members have left the church because of it. But not Allen, who deflected the idea of the church being an issue, saying, (more…)
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Tags:Aldersgate United Methodist Church, ethics, George Allen, Jason Micheli, Jon Stuart, macaca, Mike Huckabee, Muslim prayers, racial insensitivity, Tim Kaine, tolerance
Posted in Ethics-general, Politics, Religion, Tolerance | Leave a Comment »
June 9, 2011
I rely a lot on PolitiFact.com, a blog of the St. Petersburg Times, to check the truthfulness of public figures. Today they reviewed all their ratings of Anthony Weiner, It’s a sad record, even before the plethora of lies he spewed over the past week. It’s much worse than I remembered. He was only rated four times, and the highest rating he ever got was “half true.”
I had admired him for his intensity, especially for his raging plea for medical care for the 9/11 first responders, who had been abandoned by Republicans in the House. He won that battle, but I should have been more critical of him. I shoulda checked PolitiFact.com
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Tags:Anthony Weiner, ethics, half-truths, lies, medical care for 9/11 first responders, PolitiFact.com, St. Petersburg Times, truthfulness
Posted in Ethics-general, Government, Politics | Leave a Comment »
June 8, 2011
As the Anthony Weiner affair descends from “inappropriate” (his word) messages to phone sex, X-rated photos, and likely criminal conspiracy, Republican leaders are not passing up their chance to show off their hypocrisy and double standard. House Majority Whip Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA) and Republican National Committee Chair Reince Priebus are both calling for Weiner to resign his House seat.
Funny, both said they saw no reason for David Vitter (R-LA) to resign his Senate seat after he admitted to hiring a prostitute (a crime under Louisiana law) and repeatedly lying about it. Or for John Ensign (R-NV) to resign his Senate seat after he had an affair, with a subordinate, paid off her husband to keep it quiet, hired her son on his staff, and lied about everything. Or for Mark Sanford (R-SC) to resign the governorship after he flew off to visit his mistress in Argentina and lied repeatedly about it. All three had run for office under the family values banner.
Two cheers for former RNC chair Michael Steele, who told Rachel Maddow today, “I heard what the chairman said today and I thought it was a little bit not right. A pox on both their houses because they violated the public trust.”
Steele would have gotten a full three cheers had he not defended Vitter, Sanford, and Ensign when their crimes and sins emerged during his RNC chairmanship.
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Tags:Anthony Weiner . inappropriate messages, criminal conspiracy, David Vitter, double standards, Eric Cantor, ethics, hypocrisy, John Ensign, Mark Sanford, Michael Steele, phone sex, prostitute, Rachel Maddow, Reince Priebus
Posted in Ethics-general, Government, Politics | Leave a Comment »
June 6, 2011
At a circus of a press conference, Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY) admitted tweeting a photo of his brief-covered crotch to a 21-year old college student, then panicking and lying to cover it up. What ethics rule did Weiner break?
The Golden Rule, for one. He hurt a lot of people, starting with his wife, his loyal Congressional staff, the people who believed in him, and apparently, even Andrew Breitbart, the scurrilous right wing defamer and doctorer of videos.
The nearly universal rule against lying, for another. If we lie to each other society crumbles.
The rule that says do what’s expected of you. The voters who sent Weiner to Congress expected –reasonably—different of him.
In addition to the ethics violations Weiner violated the First Law of Washington Scandal: the cover-up is worse than the crime. In this respect he is forcing his admirers (including me, as of last week) to question his sanity: What in the world was he thinking when he made up those pathetically lame, unbelievable lies. Nobody, no matter their politics, not even Chris Mathews, believed he was telling the truth.
To Weiner’s credit, and there’s not much in this to his credit, he set the standard for apologizing. No “I’m sorry if you thought…” or “I was under the influence of a new allergy prescription,” or (more…)
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Tags:Andrew Breitbart, Anthony Weiner, Apologies, Chris Matthews, cover-up, crotch photo, ethics, Golden Rule, House Ethics Committee, lying, Nancy Pelosi, tweeting
Posted in Apologies, Ethics-general, Government, Media, Politics | Leave a Comment »
June 4, 2011
Americans—especially older Americans—like Israel because it’s like America: democracy, constitutional principles, independent, industrious, and tough people. But the trend on American campuses is to not like Israel so much because of the way they treat the Palestinians (and Syrians) in the territories they conquered in 1967. As Thomas Friedman told Fareed Zakaria last Sunday,
“Netanyahu…can get standing ovations in the U.S. Congress anytime [he wants], seven days a week, 24/7. How many standing ovations do you think he could get at the student government at the University of Missouri? At Stanford? At Harvard? At the University of Virginia? At the University of Texas? If you went to those student governments, they’re the future. They’re the future of voters. They’re the future people who will maintain the strategic relationship with Israel. And there, I can tell you, as anyone who goes to college campuses knows, that people don’t get Israel, what Israel is doing right now. They — some are alienated.”
The students are seeing the right-wing religious parties gaining more of a stranglehold over Israeli government policies, and seeing treatment of the conquered peoples getting worse. Fans of Israel have long defended her by saying (more…)
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Tags:Al Jazeera, conquered territories, ethics, Fareed Zakaria, Israel, Israeli Arabs, Israeli rabbis, Lod Municipality, Netanyahu, racist state. Palestinians, religious parties, segregated schools, standing ovations, student governments, Syrians, Thomas Friedman, U.S. Congress
Posted in Ethics-general, Government, International, Politics, Religion, Tolerance | 2 Comments »
June 1, 2011
It’s sad when a person of the cloth—a religious leader—preaches hate instead of love. When Florida pastor Terry Jones publicly burned a Quran it was a hateful act, but we could minimize its significance as an act by a pastor to a “congregation” of 5o people (his claim).
But when Christian evangelist Pat Robertson equates Muslims with Nazis it’s a whole ‘nother story. Robertson said on his 700 Club broadcast today,
“Why is it bigoted to resist Adolf Hitler and the Nazis and to say we don’t want to live under Nazi Germany? But oh it’s bigoted if we speak out against a force [Islam] that slowly but surely is trying to exercise domination over the world.”
Robertson’s Christian Broadcasting Network claims a reach of 100 languages, 200 countries, a million viewers a day. His hatefulness is a blot on all Christian evangelists who tolerate his ugly message.
(Thanks to Islamophobiatoday.com for flagging this. It’s a steady source of news about anti-Muslim activities)
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Tags:700 Club, Adolf Hitler, anti-Muslim activities), Christian Broadcasting Network, ethics, IslamophobiaToday.com, Muslims, Nazis, Pat Robertson, Quran burning, Terry Jones
Posted in Ethics-general, Religion, Tolerance | Leave a Comment »
May 30, 2011
Ohio State football coach Jim Tressel, arguably the top coach in college football with eight BCS bowl appearances in ten years and a national championship, resigned today. Tressel has been caught lying to the OSU administration and playing players he knew to be ineligible.
In the midst of an NCAA investigation into OSU athletics, and with several allegations of higher-ups condoning the rule-breaking, the university is trying to pin the entire rap on Tressel and avoid penalties against the Buckeyes’ top-rated football program. The school used the old trick of sugar-coating public relations pros by releasing the news on a holiday weekend, hoping that fewer people would notice.
A year ago the NCAA levied harsh penalties against USC for what appears to be a much lesser offense involving one assistant coach and one player, Reggie Bush. The OSU case involves the head coach, the director of compliance, and twenty-eight players over nine years. It may also involve the athletic director and the university President. Stay tuned for more transgressions and to compare penalties.
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Tags:Buckeyes, cheating, ethics, Jim Tressel, NCAA, NCAA penalties, Ohio State football, Reggie Bush, USC
Posted in Ethics-general, Sports | Leave a Comment »
May 23, 2011
Gov. Tim Pawlenty (R-MN) announced that he’d tell voters the “hard truths” as he campaigns for the Republican Presidential nomination. Ho-hum. We’ve heard that one before.
But listen up. Pawlenty opened his campaign today in Iowa by telling Iowans that he opposes federal subsidies for corn-based ethanol. In Iowa for gosh sakes! Next thing you know he’ll tell Floridians that he favors raising the retirement age for Social Security. Oh, but his campaign says that’s exactly what he’ll do next.
The great shame of democratic (and Democratic…and Republican) politics is politicians telling voters what they think the voters want to hear instead of what the politician really thinks. Pawlenty says he’ll be a different kind of candidate, and his first day is a sign that he means it.
Edmund Burke told his constituents 237 years ago that a representative owes them “his judgement; and he betrays, instead of serving [them], if he sacrifices it to [their] opinion.” Following Burke’s example is one of the two highest ethical duties* of an elected official.
Pawlenty gets the mythical Edmund Burke Award for his ethanol position. Here’s hoping that politicians of both parties rush to follow his example.
*The other is the duty to heed Christian theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, who wrote, ‘The temper of and integrity with which the political fight is waged is more important for the health of our society than the outcome of any issue or campaign.”
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Tags:corn-based ethanol, Edmund Burke, Edmund Burle Award, ethanol subsidies, ethical duties, ethics, hard truths, Iowa politics, Pawlenty, Reinhold Niebuhr, Republican Presidential nomination, Social Security retirement age, third rail
Posted in Ethics-general, Government, Politics | Leave a Comment »
When my car won’t start I’m an innocent. I always guess it’s the battery, and usually I’m right, but that’s the extent of my automotive knowledge. So when the Brent Air Towing /AAA truck answered my call this morning I was prepared to shell out $100 to $150 for a new battery.
Ethics Bob 