September 29, 2011
The Israeli government is inexorably annexing conquered Palestine territory, in contravention of international law and against continual requests by the United States. That’s earning them the anguish of much of the Israeli population and the condemnation of most of the world.
Israel shows exquisite timing in its defiance of the rules of civilization. As the United States shows support for Israel, Israel takes odious actions that outrage the entire Muslim world and wreck America’s credibility with that world.
In March 2010 Vice President Biden traveled to Israel to demonstrate “a total U.S. commitment to Israel’s security.” Israel picked that occasion to announce a plan to build 16oo new homes in East Jerusalem. Biden denounced the Israeli plan, but to no effect,
Last week at the United Nations President Obama cravenly surrendered to the Israeli government’s demand that we oppose the Palestinian request for admission to the UN, and called instead for resumption of negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. Two days later Israel torpedoed negotiations by announcing yet another 1100 homes would be built on occupied land in East Jerusalem. Secretary of State Clinton condemned the announcement, as if that would have any effect on Israel’s reckless plans.
United States support for Israel has become a blank check for relentless expansionism that threatens to plunge the Middle East into another war, one that Israel will do everything to draw the United States into.
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Tags: admission to the UN, Biden, East Jerusalem. United Nations, ethics, expansionism, Fool me once, international law, Israel, Middle East war, Muslim world, Obama, Palestine territory, Palestinian Authority, Secretary Clinton
Posted in Ethics-general, International, military | Leave a Comment »
September 23, 2011
Mahmoud Abbas, President of the Palestinian Authority, told a cheering UN General Assembly today, “I do not believe that anyone with a shred of conscience can reject our application for full admission to the United Nations.”
Who can disagree? The government of Israel, for one. And if the GOI objects, the American right will come right along. And so, sadly, will President Obama. Conscience takes a back seat when votes are about to be counted.
Obama’s speech to the UN was a craven surrender to the Israeli government’s demand that we oppose the Palestinian request. This is an ethical disaster, as well as a realpolitik one. It will wipe out the good will Obama earned with his earlier calls for honorable treatment of the Palestinians and his once-brave insistence on a halt to Israeli expansion into the West Bank. Forgotten, too, will be his siding with the Arab Spring, outweighed as it is among most Muslims and young people everywhere (including in Israel) by his opposition to Palestinian rights.
Obama did have support for his position. To Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, Obama’s speech was a “badge of honor.” This is the same Netanyahu that President Clinton blamed, as recently as yesterday, for preventing a peace deal.
Israeli foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman liked the speech even more, telling a news conference, “I congratulate President Obama, and I am ready to sign on this speech with both hands.” Lieberman is widely despised in Israel as a racist for his proposal to rid Israel of its Arab citizens by “redrawing its map to ‘exchange’ part of the Arab population and create a more ‘homogenous Jewish state,’ as a solution to Israel’s Arab minority ‘problem.’ ”
Having sabotaged Israel’s own relations with Turkey over Israeli refusal to apologize for killing nine Turkish activists running the Gaza blockade, Israel is now sabotaging American relations with the entire Muslim world, which will have a hard time accepting that America preaches freedom for all, but not for occupied Palestine.
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Tags: Arab Spring, Avigdor Lieberman, badge of honor, Binyamin Netanyahu, ethics, Gaza blockade, Israel, Mahmoud Abbas, Muslims, Obama, Palestinian Authority, Palestinians, President Clinton, realpolitik, Turkey, UN General Assembly, West Bank
Posted in Ethics-general, Government, International, Politics | 4 Comments »
September 19, 2011
It’s looking iffy whether the Republicans can prevent President Obama’s reelection with a Tea Party-approved candidate. So let’s change the rules.
First, change the way electoral votes are tallied. Nebraska and Pennsylvania are headed this way. In Nebraska electoral votes are awarded congressional district-by-district. Obama carried Omaha in 2008, so earned one of Nebraska’s five votes. Nebraska appears headed for a winner-take-all system that would deny Obama that one vote.
Pennsylvania is a bigger deal. Obama carried the state in 2008, and its 21 electoral votes under winner-take-all rules. It is headed for a district-by district award—yes, the system Nebraska is abandoning—under which Obama would have only gotten 11 of Pennsylvania’s 21 votes in 2008.
So we could see a Republican gain of 10 votes in Pennsylvania and one in Nebraska—enough to swing a close election. But Republicans can improve the odds a lot more by making it harder for students, minorities, and low income people to vote at all.
To this end Republican-controlled state legislatures in Florida, Ohio, and Wisconsin are moving to trim early voting days. Early voters are disproportionally Democrat.
If that’s still not enough to insure a Republican victory, legislators in 20 states are considering tighter ID requirements, including requiring a government-issued photo ID. Guess who don’t have photo IDs: lots of students, minorities, Read the rest of this entry »
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Tags: congressional districts, early voting, election rules, electoral votes, ethics, Florida, League of Women Voters, minorities, Nebraska, Obama’s reelection, Ohio, Pennsylvania, photo ID, poor people, registering new voters, Republican-controlled state legislatures, students, Tea Party, voter fraud, voter ID requirements, winner-take-all, Wisconsin
Posted in Ethics-general, Government, Politics | 3 Comments »
September 16, 2011
America’s criminal justice system consists of arrest, indictment, trial, and sentence. After serving out the sentence, the offender goes back to society with another chance. Unless that is, he was convicted of a sex offense, anything from violent rape to “sexting” a nude photo.
Sex offenders can never finish paying their debt to society, in spite of the fact that recidivism rates for sex offenders, especially for child molesters, are far lower than for other convicted felons. After serving their sentence they face crushing restrictions on where they may live–as of 2007, some 27 states and hundreds of municipalities had enacted laws that bar sex offenders from residing within up to a half mile of schools, parks, playgrounds and day care centers. Their homes are listed on the internet, and some even are subjected to humiliating signs like the one shown here. This even though the vast majority of sex offences are against relatives or friends, not strangers.
Besides the residency restrictions, sex offenders find it all but impossible to ever find gainful employment. It’s impossible to get a job with any employer that’s big enough to have a human relations department, because once they have—easily—checked the national registry of sex offenders the answer is no.
Jack Marshall’s EthicsAlarms.com treats this issue, along with the larger issue of treatment of prisoners in general, in his blog entitled America’s Untouchables. I recommend it.
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Tags: America’s Untouchables, child molesters, criminal justice, employment, ethics, EthicsAlarms, Jack Marshall, national registry of sex offenders, recidivism rates, residency restrictions, sex offenders, sexting
Posted in Criminal justice, Ethics-general, Government | 5 Comments »
September 13, 2011
Jack Marshall raises an interesting ethics issue here, as he does so often in his Ethics Alarms. This time it’s the conflict between empathy and justice. He explains how the Golden Rule can get us into some uncomfortable ethical conflicts. He writes,
‘Empathy is considered an ethical virtue for good reason: it is at the core of the Golden Rule. A person without empathy is less likely to put himself or herself in the other person’s place. The criminal justice process, however, is not a good fit for the Golden Rule. In the place of a guilty criminal, I would still probably want to be pardoned, set free, and given a second—or third, or fourth—chance to be law-abiding.”
Marshall defends Gov. Rick Perry’s answer at last Wednesday’s Republican debate to moderator Brian Williams’s question whether Perry was troubled by the idea that there might have been some innocents among the 234 people executed while Perry was Governor. After the audience cheered the grisly tally, Perry answered:
“No, sir. I’ve never struggled with that at all. The state of Texas has a very thoughtful, a very clear process in place of which — when someone commits the most heinous of crimes against our citizens, they get a fair hearing, Read the rest of this entry »
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Tags: Brian Williams, death penalty, empathy, ethical conflicts, ethics, Ethics Alarms, executions, Golden Rule, humanity, Jack Marshall, justice, leadership, Republican debate, Rick Perry, Supreme Court, Texas
Posted in Ethics-general, Government, Politics | Leave a Comment »
September 1, 2011
You’ve no doubt heard that half of federal tax filers pay no income tax. That’s part of the argument that we shouldn’t raise taxes on the rich. It’s also part of a despise-the-poor argument, like the one made by Curtis Dubay, senior tax policy analyst at the conservative Heritage Foundation.
“We have 50 percent of people who are getting something for nothing.”
It’s true that the poor pay no federal income tax. But it’s also a lie—a big one.
The truth is the poor pay taxes at a rate nearly that of the rich—the reverse of the way we usually think of our tax system as “progressive.” They don’t pay federal income tax, it’s true. But they pay state and local taxes at a higher rate than the rich. Read the rest of this entry »
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Tags: Curtis Dubay, ethics, federal income tax, free ride, Heritage Foundation, Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, Social Security and Medicare taxes, something for nothing, state and local taxes, taxes on the poor, very rich, working poor
Posted in Ethics-general, Finance, Government, hypocrisy, Politics | 2 Comments »
August 30, 2011
I’ve discovered that many corporate ethics officers don’t really have time for ethics, because they’re up to their necks in compliance training and issues. As important as compliance is—and it’s vital, especially, to comply with the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and with Sarbanes-Oxley—it isn’t ethics.
Ethics is the Golden Rule, telling the truth, and other non-legal mandates. That’s my passion: ethics, to live it and to teach it. That’s what was behind the book that Mick Ukleja and I wrote, and it’s what I try to teach at the University Of Redlands School Of Business.
So here’s my proposal: if you provide the audience I’ll visit your place of business and do a one-hour seminar on ethics, really ethics. Here’s a brief synopsis:
The Ethics Challenge: Essential Skills for Leading and Living
This is unlike any mandatory ethics training: no talk about FCPA, SEC, or DOJ. It covers what it means to behave ethically, and how that differs from merely behaving legally or in compliance with the rules. I start with the basics: keep your word and follow the Golden Rule. I finish with three essential skills for living and leading. These skills are easy to describe, not so easy to live, but living them will sharpen one’s ethical sensitivity and make it easier to keep strong and to follow one’s good intentions.
I’ll do the seminar pro bono; if it’s out of the LA commuting area I’ll ask you to cover my reasonable expenses.
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Tags: Business ethics, compliance training, corporate ethics officers, ethics, Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, Golden Rule, good intentions, mandatory ethics training, Mick Ukleja, pro bono, Sarbanes-Oxley, The Ethics Challenge, University Of Redlands
Posted in Business ethics, Ethics-general, Organizational | Leave a Comment »
August 29, 2011
Americans believe in fair play. That’s why we’re outraged when a ballplayer cheats. Mark McGuire and Sammy Sosa went from American heroes to pariahs overnight when we discovered that they were juicing. That may be why voters switched from Kerry to Bush when we learned that The New York Times had used a forged document on the eve of the 2004 election to “prove” that President Bush had pulled family stings to escape being drafted for Vietnam.
Unfair play may account for some of Sarah Palin’s popularity, as we see her being treated shabbily by the media. And now the media seem set on building up sympathy for Michele Bachmann by distortions of her words.
Ironically, the disdain many rightfully feel toward Bachmann leads them to heap undeserved scorn on her, on top of the scorn her candidacy deserves. And this is helping her, not only with her right-wing base but also with moderate people who believe she’s being treated unfairly.
So some of the media are reporting that Bachmann blamed hurricane Irene on the big-government Democrats in—ugh—WASHINGTON, D.C. Here’s how it went at a widely covered campaign stop in Florida. Read the rest of this entry »
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Tags: 2004 election, ABC, big government, CBS, CNN, D.C., ethics, fair play, forgery, hurricane Irene, Mark McGuire, Martin Bashir, media, Michele Bachmann, MSNBC, NBC-TV 4, President Bush, Sammy Sosa, Sarah Palin, St. Petersburg Times, The Chicago Sun-Times, The Nation, The New York Times., Time, Vietnam draft, Washington
Posted in Ethics-general, Media, Politics, Religion | 2 Comments »
August 28, 2011
Six days after the 9/11 attack on the United States, President George W. Bush went to the Islamic Center of Washington to publicly embrace Islam and, especially, American Muslims. He led Americans away from any idea of blaming Islam for the horror of 9/11. He repeated that theme over and over, making it a part of his second inaugural address, and returning to the Islamic Center for its rededication in 2007.
Bush’s healing message stands sadly in contrast to the ugly anti-Muslim rhetoric we hear lately from so many prominent Republicans, notably Newt Gingrich, Eric Cantor, Michele Bachmann, Herman Cain, Peter King, and Frank Gaffney. To their credit Mitt Romney and Rick Perry have not joined in, but neither have they been very vocal in rejection of Islamophobia.
Ethics Bob never thought he’d be missing George Bush’s leadership, but on this issue he surely does. Bush’s statements are worth reading:
September 17, 2001, at the Islamic Center of Washington (complete remarks):
“Thank you all very much for your hospitality. We’ve just had a—wide-ranging discussions on the matter at hand. Like the good folks standing with me, the American people were appalled and outraged at last Tuesday’s attacks. And so were Muslims all across the world. Both Americans, our Muslim friends and citizens, taxpaying citizens, and Muslims in nations were just appalled and could not believe what we saw on our TV screens.
“These acts of violence against innocents violate the fundamental tenets of the Islamic faith. And it’s important for my fellow Americans to understand that. Read the rest of this entry »
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Tags: 9/11 attack, American Muslims, anti-Muslim rhetoric, diversity, Eric Cantor, ethics, Frank Gaffney, George W Bush, Herman Cain, Islam, Islamic Center of Washington, Islamophobia. leadership, Koran, Michele Bachmann, Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, Peter King, Republicans, Rick Perry, Rumi, Sermon on the Mount, Sinai, terrorists second inaugural address
Posted in Ethics-general, Politics, Religion, Tolerance | Leave a Comment »
August 26, 2011
Jack Marshall writes in his EthicsAlarms.com blog that I was “open[ing] an ethics can of worms” with the piece about Nike and its $4-a-day workers. He raises a terrific set of questions that need to be argued over before deciding whether a company doing international business is behaving ethically. They’re not easy to answer. I guess I’ll try them out on my business ethics students next month. Here they are
Q: If workers agree to work for a given price, is the company’s obligation to pay them more?
Q: Should any company pay less than a living wage for full-time work, whether or not desperate workers assent? Read the rest of this entry »
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Tags: endorsements, ethics, Ethics Alarms, international business, Jack Marshall, living wage, local standards, Nike
Posted in Business ethics, International, Retail | Leave a Comment »
The Israeli government is inexorably annexing conquered Palestine territory, in contravention of international law and against continual requests by the United States. That’s earning them the anguish of much of the Israeli population and the condemnation of most of the world.
Ethics Bob 