Posts Tagged ‘ethics’
June 8, 2010
“We’re sorry.”
Magical words.
When a U.S. C-130 reconnaissance aircraft collided several years ago with a Chinese MIG that had been closely tailing it, the MIG crashed into the sea and the C-130 made an emergency landing in China. The Chinese government delayed releasing the crew, and it looked like a serious threat to U.S.-China relations when the Chinese ambassador paid a call on Secretary of State Colin Powell.
“We demand an apology,” said the ambassador. “We’re sorry,” replied Powell. “You’re sorry?” “Yes, we’re sorry,” Powell repeated
The ambassador was taken aback. “I must talk to Beijing,” he explained and left the State Department. Two hours later he was back with Powell. “Can you regret the loss of life?” he asked. This was a no-brainer for the intrepid Secretary of State.
“Yes, we’re sorry and we regret the loss of life.”
“I can assure you, the American airmen and the wreckage of the plane will be returned immediately,” the Chinese ambassador responded.
And so ended a potentially dangerous confrontation between the United States and China. Two magical words.
If only somebody as sensible as Powell could influence the Israeli government. Israel is about to suffer a costly—and possibly irreversible—breach in relations with Turkey, the only Muslim country it counts as an ally. (more…)
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Tags:air-to-air collision, apology, C-130 reconnaissance aircraft, Chinese MIG, Colin Powell, ethics, Gaza, Israel, killings of Turkish activists, Mavi Marmara, Namik Tan, severing relations, sorry, Turkey, Turkish ambassador, U.S.-China relations, Washington Post
Posted in Ethics-general, International, military, Politics | 3 Comments »
June 3, 2010
The Bible says “eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand.” (Exodus, 21:23) The Israeli government has long since amended this commandment. Israel’s policy appears to be eye for tooth.
Israel’s latest military action was to interdict an attempt to run an Israeli blockade of Hamas-controlled Gaza. The blockade-running flotilla sailed from Turkey with humanitarian supplies. It was stopped by Israel Defense Forces, who subdued the crews, killing ten of them, seized the boats and supplies, and brought the 700 activists, mostly Turkish, to Israel. The Israeli government said it would deport almost all of them within the next two days, but about 50 would be held for investigation into their part in the violence at sea.
It was another great victory for the once vaunted Israel Defense Forces over unarmed civilians. Here’s the recent scorecard of deaths:
· 2010 Gaza blockade incident: Israelis 0, Turks (and a few others) 10
· 2008-9 Gaza invasion: Israelis 13, Palestinians 1300
· 2006 Lebanon invasion: Israelis 162, Lebanese 1035
Israel asserts the right of self defense, and clearly some of the people they killed were fighting against Israel, including against the civilian population. But most opinion inside Israel is that the vast majority of those killed by the IDF have been unarmed non-combatants.
Israel’s relentless war on Palestinians and those who support them (more…)
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Tags:Bible, ethics, Exodus, eye for eye, Gaza, Hamas, humanitarian supplies, IDF, interdiction, Israel, Israel Defense Forces, Israeli blockade, Israeli government, Judith Ellis., Lebanon invasion, Muslim world, non-combatants, Orthodox Jews, Palestinians, Pyrrhic victory, Pyrrhus, right of self defense, scorecard of deaths, Today’s Zaman, Turkey, Turkish flags, unarmed civilians
Posted in Ethics-general, International, military, Tolerance | 1 Comment »
May 18, 2010
The Democrats had the Connecticut Senate seat sewed up, the one being vacated by Chris Dodd. Nate Silver’s authoritative website, http://fivethirtyeight.com, rated the seat at greater than 95 percent likely to remain Democratic. Until this morning’s New York Times ran a front-page piece headlined, “Candidate’s Words on Vietnam Service Differ From History.”
And how!
Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, Democratic candidate, has been running 13-25 points ahead of possible Republican opponents. But he’s been claiming that he served in Vietnam, and that, “When we came back, we were spat on; we couldn’t wear our uniforms.” But Blumenthal never served in Vietnam. He got five deferments from the draft, and when they ran out he did the only thing that would save him from having to go to Vietnam: he joined the Marine Corps Reserve, where his most intense action was the Christmas time Toys for Tots” program. (more…)
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Tags:Bill Curry, Chris Dodd, Connecticut, Connecticut Attorney General, deferments, Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, Democrats, Eric Schultz, ethics, fivethirtyeight.com, Harvard swim team, Linda McMahon, lying, Marine Corps Reserve, McMahon campaign, misspeak, Nate Silver, New York Times, Richard Blumenthal, Senate, Toys for Tots, veracity, Vietnam, WWE
Posted in Ethics-general, Politics | 8 Comments »
May 15, 2010
I’ve written here about how I recently left a wallet with all my credit cards and $300 in cash in an Istanbul Starbucks, and how the finder tracked me down and returned it intact. I had a similar experience in Turkey several years before. Good thing I didn’t do that in Silicon Valley, where Apple engineer Gray Powell left a priceless prototype of Apple’s next edition of the iPhone in a Redwood City bar. Brian Hogan, a 21-year-old college student, found the phone and shopped it around, finally selling it to technology blog Gizmodo for $5,000.
Hogan’s roommate, Katherine Martinson, said she and other friends tried to talk Hogan out of selling the phone, arguing it would ruin the career of the Apple engineer who lost it. Hogan responded,
“Sucks for him. He lost his phone. Shouldn’t have lost his phone.”
He sure shouldn’t have lost it where Brian Hogan could find it, steal it, and sell it. He should have lost it in Istanbul where it would have been quickly returned to him.
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Tags:Apple, Brian Hogan, ethics, Gizmodo, Gray Powell, iPhone, Istanbul, Katherine Martinson, lost wallet, Redwood City, Silicon Valley, Starbucks, Turkey
Posted in Business ethics, Ethics-general, International | 2 Comments »
May 14, 2010
“What’s the right thing to do here?”
That’s the very first line of the autobiography of billionaire Meg Whitman, candidate for the Republican nomination for California governor. She paints herself as the ethical candidate: “No playing things loose or close to the edge. We were going to do things the right way.” That’s an unnamed eBay executive talking in a campaign ad about working for Whitman back then. When Forbes Magazine did a 2007 cover story on Whitman they enthused, “Ebay’s Meg Whitman built a retail leviathan without sacrificing her customers, shareholders or ethics.”
But politicians claiming they’re particularly ethical are like gangsters shouting, “Come and get me, copper.” The press, like the cops, usually accepts the challenge, a la John Edwards, Gary Hart, Eliot Spitzer, and others.
If you watch television in California you already know about Whitman’s ethics, displayed in $60 million worth of the skuzziest campaign ads imaginable. But her hyper-negative campaign against fellow Republican Steve Poizner isn’t the most interesting thing about Whitman’s campaign.
Try googling “Meg Whitman ethics.” It turns up 48,800 entries. There are the articles about her sweetheart deal with Goldman Sachs, in which she moved the banking business of eBay, which she headed, to Goldman Sachs in return for the inside track on an initial public stock offering (IPO) in which she made a quick $1.78 million. When eBay shareholders sued she agreed to give her ill-gotten gains (more…)
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Tags:California governor, campaign ads, Craigslist.com, eBay, Eliot Spitzer, ethics, Forbes Magazine, Gary Hart, Goldman Sachs, Hurricane Katrina, IPO, John Edwards, Los Angeles Times, Meg Whitman, Republican nomination, Steve Poizner
Posted in Business ethics, Ethics-general, Politics | 3 Comments »
May 11, 2010
There’s something about bureaucracy that violates my sense of ethics. Bureaucracy represses one’s humanity. Humans want to make a difference in their lives, but bureaucracy forces conformity and sameness. One definition in the American Heritage Dictionary is “an administrative system in which the need or inclination to follow rigid or complex procedures impedes effective action.”
The bureaucratic system is founded on rules, supervision and enforcement by specialists and inspectors to make sure workers follow the rules, even when the rules deviate from common sense.
We need to move beyond it, but moving beyond it means shifting to a different form of control, one based on a strong sense of mission and a culture of trust, with authority and responsibility shifted from the few at the top to the many front-line workers.
This shift also requires that the organization have a strong ethical grounding. Ethics must replace the missing rules, but in many organizations what passes for ethics is merely another set of rules to comply with, and ethics training usually consists of badgering workers about bribery, conflict of interest and favoritism.
Enron had a nice 65-page code of ethics. The International City/County Management Association has a pretty good code of ethics except that it’s 2000 words long, has a 3200-word supplementary “Rules of Procedure for Enforcement,” and is written by lawyers or at least by people who have mastered esoteric, lawyerly writing. Most people can’t live by the ICMA code because they simply can’t remember any of it. (more…)
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Tags:authority and responsibility, Bureaucracy, code of ethics, common sense, conflict of interest, corruption, Enron, ethics, fraud, Governing.com), International City/County Management Association, sense of mission, trust, truth to power, wallet-sized card, waste
Posted in Business ethics, Ethics-general, Organizational, Uncategorized | 2 Comments »
April 29, 2010
Florida Gov. Charlie Crist today announced his candidacy for Florida’s open Senate seat. Crist had been a huge favorite to win, but as the anti-incumbent fever grew Florida House Speaker Marco Rubio swept far past Crist in the polls of Republican primary voters.
Crist is a centrist Republican, a breed that is rapidly becoming extinct. Seeing no chance to win the Republican primary that had appeared his for the taking a few months ago, Crist announced today that he would contest the November election as an independent.
Is it ethical for a politician to change parties? It depends. When Pennsylvania voters reelected Arlen Specter to a fifth Senate term in 2004 they elected him as a Republican—an affiliation he had embraced ever since changing from a Democrat in 1965 to challenge the Democratic district attorney of Philadelphia. Specter saw his growing estrangement from the people who vote in the Republican primary, decided he had little chance to be nominated for reelection, so, Presto! He became a Democrat. Specter’s move was unethical: (more…)
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Tags:Arlen Specter, but reneging on your commitment? That’s different. It’s unethical and unforgettable. Charlie Crist, Changing parties isn’t necessarily unethical, Chris Wallace, ethics, Florida Senate, Fox News Sunday, Independent, Kendrick Meek, Marco Rubio, Republican primary
Posted in Ethics-general, Politics | 2 Comments »
April 28, 2010
The Senate held a ten-hour hearing yesterday on Goldman Sachs’s role in the financial crisis. The question for the committee was whether new laws were needed to reform the financial system; the question for me was whether Goldman Sachs—America’s most prestigious investment bank—was serious about ethics.
The hearing was long, the members were irritable, the subject was complicated, and the Goldman Sachs executives were evasive when asked such tough questions as whether they had any obligation to act in the best interest of their clients. But two exchanges tell us unequivocally about ethics at Goldman Sachs. First, Chairman Carl Levin (D-MI) and Goldman Sachs Chief Financial Officer David Viniar.
LEVIN: And when you heard that your employees, in these e-mails, when looking at these deals said, God, what a shitty deal, God what a piece of crap — when you hear your own employees or read about those in the e-mails, do you feel anything?
VINIAR: I think that’s very unfortunate to have on e-mail. [Laughter and groaning from the audience]
LEVIN: On an e-mail?
VINIAR: Please don’t take that the wrong way. I think it’s very unfortunate for anyone to have said that in any form.
LEVIN: How about to believe that and sell them? (more…)
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Tags:Carl Levin, clients, David Viniar, e-mails, ethics, financial reform, Goldman Sachs, Lloyd Blankfein, Senate hearing¸ financial crisis, shitty deal
Posted in Business ethics, Ethics-general, Politics | 2 Comments »
April 24, 2010
In the wake of Wall Street scandals, collapses, bailouts, bonus billions, record profits, and now, according to the SEC, charges of fraud, the big show moves to Washington on Tuesday when the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, chaired by Carl Levin (D-MI) will grill Lloyd Blankfein, Goldman Sachs CEO, and six current and former Goldman people, including Fabrice “Fabulous Fab” Tourre. The show starts at 10 AM EDT.
Levin is a very bright, very tough, inquisitor who is not one of the 46 senators who have gotten major contributions from Goldman. Nor is the ranking Republican, Tom Coburn (R-OK). The committee has a long history of changing Americans’ attitudes and behaviors, going back to 1921. It may well start to change the way Americans think about ethics and business.
Blankfein will testify last. He’ll face an awful dilemma: Will he defend Goldman’s behavior—described by Business Week’s Michael Lewis as creating a billion dollar bond package to fail, tricking and bribing the ratings agencies into blessing the package, then selling it to a slow-witted German?
Or will he say that Fabulous Fab’s deal was inconsistent with Goldman’s ethical standards, and thereby give credence to the SEC’s charge of fraud?
What would you do?
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Tags:bailouts, bonus billions, Carl Levin, ethics, Fabrice “Fabulous Fab” Tourre, fraud, Goldman Sachs, Lloyd Blankfein, Michael Lewis, ratings agencies, SEC, Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, Tom Coburn, Wall Street
Posted in Business ethics, Ethics-general, Finance, Politics | 3 Comments »
April 23, 2010
Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer today signed into law what President Obama had just called an irresponsible act that “threaten[s] to undermine basic notions of fairness that we cherish as Americans, as well as the trust between police and their communities that is so crucial to keeping us safe.”
The new law makes it a crime to lack proper immigration paperwork and requires police, if they have reasonable suspicion that someone is in the country illegally, to determine their immigration status. It also bars people from soliciting work as day laborers.
The President made his remarks at a naturalization ceremony for 24 active-duty military people. He acknowledged that the Arizona action resulted from “our failure to act responsibly at the federal level,” as he called for Congress to enact comprehensive immigration reform.
So we now wait and see whether the new law increases or decreases the security of the people of Arizona. To her credit, Gov. Brewer spoke forcefully about her determination not to tolerate racial profiling by police officers. On the other hand, when a reporter asked her what an illegal immigrant looked like, she answered simply, “I don’t know.”
She said she signed the law to combat the “murderous greed of drug cartels, drop houses, kidnappings, and violence.” We can expect that the murderous greedy drug kingpins will no longer congregate in Wal-Mart parking lots looking for day labor.
Read The Ethics Challenge: Strengthening Your Integrity in a Greedy World
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Tags:Arizona law, comprehensive immigration reform, day laborers, drop houses, drug cartels, ethics, fairness, immigration, Jan Brewer, kidnappings, naturalization ceremony, police, President Obama, racial profiling, reasonable suspicion, Wal-Mart parking lots
Posted in Ethics-general, military, Politics, Tolerance | 3 Comments »
Ethics Bob 