Ethics Newsline®

Reading the papers these days, you’d be forgiven for thinking that the nation’s moral barometer is in decline. So let me share some happier news. It’s about a well-financed, widely popular, and deeply patriotic community tradition that is suddenly abandoned — happily and without a squawk — when it comes face to face with a small fuzzy bird.

For decades, the coastal village of Camden, Maine, has invested in lavish displays of Fourth of July fireworks. The town’s natural harbor makes a particularly fine setting for pyrotechnics; by sunset on the 4th, you’re hard pressed to find a place to squeeze another boat in among the floats and moorings. On shore, people park their pickups backward on the town landing and sit on the tailgates, or bring blankets and lawn chairs to the grassy park that slopes down to the seawall. When it’s dark enough, the first sizzler takes off from the barge anchored alongside Curtis Island at the harbor’s mouth and the crowd shouts and honks with expectation.

And so it was to have been again this year — until the eaglet appeared. It was hatched in a nest atop a white pine in the center of Curtis Island. A pair of bald eagles — one of only 300 pairs of this threatened species estimated to be nesting in Maine — had taken up residence there last year, but abandoned the nest without producing progeny. But in February residents on the nearby mainland noted the return of the eagles — and, before long, spotted the chick peeking out over the rim of the nest.

With that, state biologists took up the case. Eagles, it seems, place enormous value on their privacy. They make all manner of ruckus when people approach too close to their tree. Maine’s Endangered Species Act, in fact, imposes serious penalties for invading the “essential habitat” of a quarter-mile radius around an eagle’s nest. So the town, which owns the uninhabited island, agreed to close this popular picnic destination to visitors.

But if eagles take umbrage at a few quiet picnickers on the ground, what would they make of a thundering half-hour festival of lurid color and acrid smoke well above treetop level — and well within their “essential habitat”? Would they make for North Haven or Mount Desert, leaving their abandoned youngster to become one of the 80 percent of eaglets that don’t survive to maturity?

Huddling quickly, the Downtown Business Group and the Fireworks Committee hatched their own alternative. This year, fireworks will be replaced by an evening street dance on the town landing, leaving Curtis Island in its own veil of darkness and peace.

What’s this got to do with the moral barometer? If you’re going to plot the rise and fall of an ethical sense, you need to think historically. Around Camden, one thing is clear: This wouldn’t have happened 25 years ago. Something has changed that makes it possible for a bird most people won’t ever see to overturn a community tradition they’ve enjoyed for years. That something, you may say, is law, not ethics. But this law reflects a national consensus that species in peril ought to be saved and that such a moral duty must trump the settled habits of individuals and communities. That certainly suggests that, over time, ethics is rising.

There’s a certain moral victory, too, in the triumph over cynicism. Just look at the odds. Camden has a sophisticated business community well schooled in producing reasons for shoppers to come to town. Fireworks on the Fourth? What could be a better draw than its winning combination of patriotism and picnic, spending and spectacle? Try shutting down that parade and cynics would predict that local commercial interests would fly madly in circles, flapping angrily and chirping loudly, and finally have their way. What actually happened? There was quick, hearty agreement that eagles come first and that the community would have to adapt.

Finally, don’t overlook the symbolism. At odds were two core symbols of Americana: the bald eagle and the rockets’ red glare. There’s a craggy independence to the former, a sharp-eyed creature of the frontier that blends soaring grace and self-reliant defensiveness. And there’s a celebratory militarism to the latter, reminding us of battles fought and lives surrendered in the purchase of freedom and democracy.

It may be that, fresh from war in Iraq, we’ve had enough of the latter for now. Emotionally, this may be the year of the eaglet rather than the skyrocket. But I like to think there’s a longer rhythm here. If, for the sake of nature and conservation, an entire community gives up on artifice and restructures its amusement, all’s not wrong with the moral barometer.

(c)2003 Institute for Global Ethics

“Ideally, there’s going to be a cross-fertilization of ideas…. Novartis, Merck, Pfizer understand they have to look to us. This is an incredible opportunity, if we can figure out how to reach out…. It’s not a bad thing to benefit from the fruits of your labor. It’s okay.”

– Susanne Churchill, associate dean for research at Harvard Medical School, discussing the prominent university’s decision to consider easing rules that bar researchers from having financial ties to the drug companies whose products they test.

* * * * *

“Harvard Medical School would be unwise to loosen its restrictions. It should tighten them. Academic medical centers need to keep their missions distinct from the mission of investor-owned businesses.”

– Dr. Marcia Angell, former editor of the New England Journal of Medicine, warning that such financial ties would likely push researchers to “place test results in a positive light, devise research agendas that fulfill corporate needs, and withhold data from publication to benefit companies,” according to the Boston Globe. (“Harvard May Ease Rules on Faculty Ties to Drug Firms,” Boston Globe, June 9.)

WASHINGTON
Mortgage finance king Freddie Mac last week cleared out its top executive suites in a bid to restore confidence in the firm, which is under criminal investigation for alleged financial misconduct.

Freddie Mac, a congressionally chartered firm that is publicly owned, is under investigation for purported bookkeeping irregularities from 2000 through 2002. The firm reported earnings of $3.2 billion in 2001.

Together with sister firm Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac owns or guarantees nearly half of the country’s residential mortgage debt, reported the Washington Post.

Investigators are probing whether Freddie Mac distorted revenues while enjoying lax oversight from Congress, which exempts the firm from annual and quarterly reporting rules required of other publicly traded companies, according to the Associated Press.

That special exemption is now under review by Congress, which has launched a probe of the company’s behavior, reported the AP.

Under informal investigation since January, Freddie Mac last week became the subject of a criminal probe following what investigators characterized as a lack of cooperation from David Glenn, president and chief operating officer since 1990.

Asked to turn over his personal notebooks detailing meetings and discussions about the firm’s practices, Glenn allegedly balked, then doctored and destroyed some pages, according to the Post.

Freddie Mac fired Glenn “because of serious questions as to the timeliness and completeness of his cooperation and candor,” the company said in a statement cited by the Post.

Freddie Mac chief executive Leland Brendsel and chief financial officer Vaughn Clarke also left the firm last week, resigning in the wake of the growing investigation.

Although many Freddie Mac investors are worried about the probe, most held tight on their financial stakes in the firm, according to a weekend report in the Wall Street Journal.

James Gipson, president of Pacific Financial Research, which owns about three percent of Freddie Mac shares, told the Journal that investment decisions should be “fact-based,” but in his view there has been “an absence” of facts in the case so far.

NEW YORK
Bernard Ebbers, the former head of WorldCom, was largely responsible for setting the tone and policies that led to that firm’s implosion and infamy as the largest corporate bankruptcy in U.S. history, two investigative panels said last week.

The groups’ findings are part of the legal process of figuring out where to pin blame for the estimated $11 billion in WorldCom fraud, helping creditors decide how widely to spread their efforts to recoup owed funds.

Last week’s findings come from two separate panels — one hired by three new WorldCom directors conducting an internal investigation of the fraud, the other run by the New York bankruptcy court overseeing the firm’s debt reorganization, reported the New York Times.

Both teams found that Ebbers, the former chairman and chief executive of WorldCom, was largely to blame for the firm’s downfall due to slack oversight, conflicts of interest, and poor leadership.

“Though much of this report details the implementation of fraud by others, [Ebbers] was the source of the culture, as well as much of the pressure, that gave birth to this fraud,” according to the report commissioned by WorldCom, which is changing its name to MCI.

The reports also note that while evidence suggests that Ebbers knew about the fraud at least one year before it became public, his loose and email-free management style may help him elude conviction by killing the paper trail.

Ebbers’ lawyer last week insisted that his client “neither directly nor indirectly participated in any kind of fraud.”

In addition to Ebbers, the reports singled out former WorldCom chief financial officer Scott Sullivan and the company’s compliant board of directors, saying they failed in their role as watchdog, noted the Times.

The board’s failings, combined with flaws in senior management, created “an environment and culture that permitted the fraud to grow dramatically and ultimately propelled the company’s descent into bankruptcy,” blasted the bankruptcy court’s report.

WASHINGTON
Aerospace giant Boeing Co. came under fire on two fronts last week as rival Lockheed Martin sued the firm for racketeering and watchdog groups called for a congressional investigation into a pending federal contract.

Lockheed’s lawsuit charges Boeing with violations of federal and Florida racketeering and antitrust laws, allegations stemming from Boeing’s alleged use of stolen documents to win a government contract in 1999.

Boeing has admitted that a former Lockheed worker arrived for a new job at Boeing with stolen documents from the rival firm, allowing Boeing to have an upper hand when bidding for the lucrative contract.

While the two firms eventually split the contract, Boeing got a better deal: 21 rocket launches compared to Lockheed’s seven, reported the Associated Press. Boeing later fired the former Lockheed worker.

Last week, Boeing took out full-page ads in national newspapers saying the former employee’s actions were isolated and against the company’s ethics, saying the wrongdoing was limited to “a handful of people.”

Boeing also was targeted last week for a planned $20 billion contract worked out with the White House to supply more than 100 air refueling tankers that will replace a decades-old fleet badly in need of repair.

Instead of buying the Boeing 767s outright, the Bush administration said it will lease the aircraft — a plan that many critics of differing political stripes are slamming as a corporate bailout for the struggling 767 line.

The planned deal has been championed by House Speaker Dennis Hastert, an Illinois Republican who hails from the same state as Boeing’s headquarters, as well as by Linda Daschle, a lobbyist married to Senate majority leader Tom Daschle (D-South Dak.).

A coalition of groups from the right and the left have joined forces to urge a congressional inquiry into the lease, which they say will cost much more than buying the planes outright, as the government normally does.

The lease arrangement helps Boeing by propping up declining corporate orders and a struggling balance sheet and the Bush administration by spreading out the cost of the program, making it look less expensive than it really is, according to the New York Times.

“This is a great deal for the Boeing Company that I’m sure is the envy of corporate lobbyists from one end of K Street to the other,” Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said after the Bush administration approved the lease. “But it’s a lousy deal for the Air Force and the American taxpayer.”

WASHINGTON
The Supreme Court last week made it easier for many fired workers to sue their former employers on the grounds of discrimination — a move that lowers the threshold for evidence needed to file the case and get heard by a jury.

The decision upends the predominant view of how much evidence plaintiffs must provide when trying to prove that they were the victims of illegal discrimination on the job, reported the New York Times.

In 1989, the Supreme Court ruled that “direct evidence” of discrimination was required before a case could proceed on a “mixed motive” firing — a firing motivated at least in part by discrimination. The court’s decision set the hurdle high, making it necessary for plaintiffs to produce a “smoking gun.”

Congress responded in 1991 by passing legislation that eased the burden of proof, saying circumstantial — not direct — evidence was enough to move the case forward.

Even after that law was passed, nearly all of the nation’s courts clung to the “direct evidence” view authored by Justice Sandra Day O’Connor in the court’s 1989 ruling, according to the Times.

Last week, O’Connor said that the lower courts were wrong to adhere to her earlier ruling, arguing that Congress had lowered the threshold for proof with its 1991 ruling. The rest of the court agreed unanimously.

“On its face, the statute does not mention, much less require, that a plaintiff make a heightened showing through direct evidence,” Justice Clarence Thomas wrote for the united court.

An employee “need only present sufficient evidence for a reasonable jury to conclude, by a preponderance of the evidence, that ‘race, color, religion, sex, or national origin was a motivating factor for any employment practice,’” Thomas concluded.

The ruling comes in the case of a female forklift operator fired by Caesars Palace casino in Las Vegas. The woman sued after being fired for fighting with a male coworker, saying she had been treated differently throughout her employment because of her gender.

The ruling upholds a $364,000 jury award in her favor.

Last week’s decision rejects a push by the Bush administration and U.S. industry to keep the bar high on such discrimination cases, hundreds of which are already in the pipeline, according to the Times.

LONDON
U.K. employers who monitor the emails, phone messages, and Internet habits of their workers were warned last week to be up front and transparent about their policies or face potential legal action.

Electronic surveillance in the workplace is on the increase as technology improves, making it easy for bosses to keep track of the keystrokes, phone calls, and surfed sites of workers, reported the BBC.

Hoping to curb abuses before they begin, U.K. information commissioner Richard Thomas last week gave guidance to firms in a push for balance between workplace efficiency and workers’ rights.

The code stipulates, “It is important to develop a culture in which respect for private life, data protection, security, and confidentiality of personal information is seen as the norm,” reported the Independent.

Thomas told firms that they should adopt an “open and transparent” policy of advising workers about the extent of monitoring and steer clear of covert surveillance except in rare cases of criminal acts.

Thomas’s action was welcomed by Britain’s Trades Union Congress (TUC), which last week launched a Web site providing guidance on electronic surveillance at the workplace.

“Staff, unions, and employers need to arrive at a solution which balances business needs with the right to individual privacy,” TUC general secretary Brendan Barber told the Guardian.

A recent U.K. survey found that disciplinary cases involving email and Internet use at work outnumbered those for dishonesty, violence, and health and safety violations, according to the Independent.

WASHINGTON
Following a week of intense criticism, Sen. Larry Craig (R-Idaho) last week began to back down from his decision to hold hostage the promotion of more than 200 Air Force officers in a dispute over four airplanes.

For nearly a month, Craig has been using Senate rules to single-handedly block the promotions from coming to the chamber’s floor for consideration — usually a matter of little contention.

Craig, however, says the Pentagon has refused to honor a deal that would station eight C-130 transport planes at a National Guard Base in his home state.

The missing planes — and $40 million in completed construction at the Idaho base — are seen as insurance against the base being shut down during a planned round of closures in 2005, reported the Associated Press.

While four planes have been delivered to the Idaho base, four others have remained AWOL, in Craig’s view. Until he gets the planes, Craig had vowed to hold up the Air Force promotions, reported the New York Times.

The Pentagon last week denied that such a deal was ever made and warned that it would not cooperate with Craig’s administrative maneuver, which has held up as many as 850 job changes at the Air Force.

“There’s not going to be any deal for any more C-130s,” one top official told the Times.

Under pressure from President Bush, fellow Republicans, and congressional Democrats, Craig last week released 127 of the lower-level promotions, allowing them to proceed.

Craig refused, however, to relent on 85 high-ranking others — all colonels and generals — “until we are able to come to a conclusion,” he said through a spokesman.

Among those caught in the political crossfire are Gen. Robert Foglesong, selected to lead U.S. Air Forces in Europe, and Maj. Gen. John Rosa Jr., the incoming superintendent of the scandal-riddled U.S. Air Force Academy, noted the Times.

Sen. John McCain of Arizona, a Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, last week blasted Craig for his behavior.

“It is completely inappropriate to place a hold on the promotion of servicemen and women who play no role whatsoever in establishing Air Force policy,” McCain said in a statement.

WASHINGTON
The Bush administration plans to relax a conservation rule protecting nearly one-third of the nation’s forests from road building — a move critics have condemned as a give-away to industry and Republican governors.

The timber industry immediately welcomed the proposal, which was blasted by conservation groups.

The Bush policy effectively overturns key portions of the Roadless Area Conservation Rule, adopted in January 2001 by President Clinton in his final days before leaving office, reported USA Today.

Hailed as a landmark move to protect the nation’s forests, the rule barred the building of roads in 58.5 million acres of federal forests, effectively blocking any development or logging and setting aside roughly 2 percent of U.S. lands for preservation.

The rule, long a thorn in the side of the West’s Republican governors and the timber industry, has been challenged in lawsuits, but was recently upheld by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, reported the San Francisco Chronicle.

Last week, the Bush administration said it had settled one such case with the state of Alaska, agreeing to exempt two national forests — the Tongass and the Chugach — from the rule altogether. In other states, the government said it would effectively end the road-building ban by allowing governors to seek exemptions from the rule.

“We look at this as a real opportunity to engage the states as partners in deciding where improvements to the rule can be made on a limited basis,” U.S. Department of Agriculture undersecretary Mark Rey said last week.

Such local discretion over a national resource is part of the problem with Bush’s plan, Sean Cosgrove, national forest policy specialist with the Sierra Club, told the Chronicle.

“To go ahead and allow individual governors to apply to have national forests in their state removed from the roadless rule is completely unheard of, ” Cosgrove said. “These are national forests, they are not to be managed by individual governors.”

David Bischel, president of the California Forestry Association, offered tentative praise for the relaxed rule, which he said could still prove problematic.

“It’s very much good public policy to involve state and local government in these types of decisions,” Bischel told the Chronicle. “(But) I think the jury is still out whether there is a viable approach here…. It may end up being a political decision rather than a resource decision.”

Special to Newsline from Canadian correspondent Errol P. Mendes

OTTAWA
The Ottawa Citizen is reporting that major U.S. drug companies will start intensifying their lobbying to change the Canadian health care system in order to end the subsidized prescription drug prices being used by Canadian Internet pharmacy companies to sell cheaper drugs to U.S. seniors and others who cannot afford the cost of drugs in the United States.

The Citizen is reporting that over $1 million is being set aside by the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) to argue that the subsidization of drugs in Canada is bad for patients and deters innovation in research and development of new drugs.

In addition, PhRMA is setting aside a further $450,000 to lobby against the Internet pharmacy outlets in Canada.

Leaked documents from the association, according to the Citizen report, assert that foreign government price controls are causing “politically unsustainable cross-border pricing differences.”

Canadian critics of the U.S. system argue that deregulation of drug prices would undermine the universally accessible health care system in Canada and lead to unaffordable drug prices, as is the case in the United States.

LONDON
Ethics and religion clashed vociferously this week in London after a governmental advisory group issued a report condemning the kosher and halal methods of slaughter as cruel and recommending they be banned.

Halal is an Arabic word meaning “legally permissible” that is applied to permitted dietary practices under Muslim tradition.

The Farm Animal Welfare Council (FAWC) stated in its report that the Jewish and Muslim slaughter methods, which, according to the BBC, require one single cut to the throat without first stunning the animal, cause severe and undue suffering.

“This is a major incision into the animal and to say that it doesn’t suffer is quite ridiculous,” Dr. Judy MacArthur Clark, FAWC chairwoman, told the BBC.

Activist group Compassion in World Farming also expressed its concern with the kosher and halal methods, agreeing with the conclusions of the FAWC report. Group member Peter Stevenson told the Independent, “Scientific research shows that animals whose throats are cut while they are fully conscious can suffer terribly over relatively lengthy periods as they bleed to death.”

The report has ironically given members of the Jewish and Muslim communities a common enemy and a reason to join forces. Many Jews and Muslims condemned the report as not only inaccurate but as an attack on their religious beliefs as well.

Henry Grunwald QC, president of the Jewish Board of Deputies, told the Independent, “Many scientific experts have confirmed that the Jewish method of religious slaughter is at least as humane as any other method of slaughter.”

The Muslim Council of Britain also struck out at the report, saying that the non-halal and non-kosher method of slaughter — i.e., stunning the animal first — is itself a cruel act.

Dr. Abdul Mahid Katme, spokesman on halal meat and food for the group, called stunning “a form of torture,” according to the Independent. Rabbi Yehuda Brodie, registrar of the Manchester Beth Din, agreed: “There can be no doubt that every animal feels pain from the stunning, and moreover some 14,000 animals a year are stunned badly or wrongly.”

The issue has raised the ire of Muslims in particular, who in the current world climate feel that their religion is the subject of increasing scrutiny. One Central London Mosque worshipper told the BBC, “Everything about the Islamic way of life is under attack so it makes you wonder if this is actually about humanity to animals.”

Peter Jinan of the British Veterinary Association sees it another way. “We’re looking at what is acceptable in the moral and ethical society we live in.”

NEW YORK
The board that awards the Pulitzer Prize is considering revoking a 1932 Pulitzer given to a New York Times reporter accused of pandering to the Stalin regime by skewing coverage to hide atrocities.

The work of Walter Duranty, who covered the Soviet Union for the Times from 1922 to 1941, was later partially discredited for its bias to curry favor with Josef Stalin, reported the Associated Press.

In a push to force the Ukrainian people to turn over their land, Stalin engineered a famine in the region in 1932, killing as many as 7 million Ukranians — an event that Duranty downplayed or obscured altogether, according to critics.

To mark the seventieth anniversary of the forced famine, Ukrainians have been barraging the Pulitzer Board with requests to have Duranty’s 1932 award revoked.

“Exactly like Jayson Blair, the heart of all this is journalistic integrity and ethics,” Ukrainian Congress Committee of America president Michael Sawkiw Jr. told the AP.

Pulitzer Board administrator Sig Gissler said a subcommittee is reviewing the complaints, which have flooded the board in the form of more than 15,000 postcards, letters, and emails.

“Like any significant complaint, we take them seriously,” Gissler said “All aspects and ramifications will be considered.”

The Pulitzer Board launched a similar probe of Duranty’s award in 1990, according to the AP. At that time, the Pulitzer Board declined to revoke the award, noting that it was conferred for work completed in 1931 — one year before he distorted his coverage of the Ukrainian famine.

Although the board has never revoked an award, one was returned: the 1981 Pulitzer given to Washington Post reporter Janet Cooke, who admitted fabricating stories.

From the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press:

“As the U.S. Supreme Court prepares for what could be a landmark ruling on the issue of racial preferences in college admissions, a new Pew Research Center nationwide survey finds a growing majority of the public supporting the general idea of affirmative action. But the poll results also reflect the public’s complicated and sometimes contradictory attitudes about the subject.

“There is support for the rationale of affirmative action - such as overcoming past discrimination or increasing the diversity of students in college. But at the same time, Americans question the fairness of such programs, the rationale notwithstanding.

“When the details of specific affirmative action programs are raised, public reservations increase. Further, when people are questioned about programs involving preferential treatment for minorities, opinion turns negative. On all questions about affirmative action there are predictable racial differences in opinion, but significant gender differences are evident as well, even when the issue of gender inequality is not mentioned in the question.

“Relatively few people - white or black - report having real-life experiences with affirmative action: Only 16 percent overall have been helped or hurt. Among those who’ve been affected, whites generally say they were hurt while blacks say they have been helped.

“In the current poll, …63 percent say they favor ‘affirmative action programs designed to help blacks, women, and other minorities get better jobs and education.’ There is somewhat less support (57 percent) when the question specifically mentions giving ’special preferences’ to women and minorities….

“Both versions of the general question - with and without the reference to ’special preferences’ - found greater support for affirmative action than in 1995….

“The distinction between the general idea of affirmative action and the use of racial preferences matters much more for whites than for nonwhites: 86 percent of nonwhites favor affirmative action in general, and 82 percent favor racial preferences. Among whites, 58 percent support the general concept, but only 49 percent support preferences for minorities. Most of the difference in the impact of the reference to preferences occurs among whites with a high school education or less: 66 percent favor affirmative action in general, but only 51 percent favor it with racial preferences. Among college educated whites, the same percentage (51 percent) favor affirmative action whether preferences are mentioned or not.

“More people think affirmative action programs in college admissions are a good thing than think they are fair. Overall, a solid majority of 60 percent say such programs are a good thing….

“But significantly more people worry about the fairness of the programs. Less than a majority overall (47 percent) say they are fair, and 42 percent say they are unfair. Black-white differences on this question are much smaller than on the question of whether such programs are a good thing or not….”

“Where nature is concerned, familiarity breeds love and knowledge, not contempt.”

– Stewart Udall (U.S. lawyer, congressman, and Interior secretary, 1920- )