Ethics Newsline®

SAN FRANCISCO
When Californians replaced Governor Gray Davis with Arnold Schwarzenegger last week, they did so with a decisive and unblinking certitude. Watching the election returns here, I was struck by the fact that, with just 3 percent of the vote tallied, the networks were already projecting Mr. Schwarzenegger as the winner.

Why? What made it possible for a celebrity with no political experience to knock off an experienced incumbent — in the course of nine weeks? Pundits will cry and opine on that question for years. But they’ll miss the full picture unless they factor in the broader context, particularly the sense of moral outrage that has welled up in this country in recent years.

Like quarks and ice cream, moral outrage comes in various flavors:

• Economic. When public outrage over Enron, Arthur Andersen, WorldCom, Tyco, and their ilk reached its crescendo in the summer of 2002, Congress finally swept aside the vigorous lobbying efforts of the financial industry and rushed the Sarbanes-Oxley corporate regulations into law. California, too, felt its share of economic outrage as Gov. Davis appeared incapable of working with the state legislature to create a budget.
• Social. The popularity of the National Do-Not-Call Registry, launched in June on a torrent of outrage against telemarketers, far exceeded any estimates: Some 10 million Americans signed up in the first four days. Social outrage also figured in California, as voters reacted against Gov. Davis’s hasty approval of legislation giving illegal aliens the right to get driver’s licenses.
• Political. The candidacy of Democratic presidential hopeful Howard Dean, the iconoclastic Vermonter who delights in lobbing bombs at Republicans and Democrats alike, has fascinated a citizenry outraged at “insider” politics. In California, such political outrage surfaced in the voters’ devil-take-the-hindmost relish in replacing the insider with a candidate resoundingly from elsewhere.

Beneath each of these flavors lies a substrate of moral concern — a sense that things simply aren’t right, and something must restore a sense of values, virtue, and balance to the nation’s public life. Such moral imbalance can lie dormant for years, even while, deep within the fissures of public concern, an enormous pressure is building. When something drills down into it — a series of accounting scandals, a Do-Not-Call Registry, or a no-holds-barred presidential candidate — up comes the outrage, boiling to the surface like a geyser and sending everyone for cover.

Outrage is not a new idea. The word originally meant intemperance, immoderation, or (from its root words) beyond rage. By 1769, says my Oxford English Dictionary, it described a “gross or wanton wrong or injury done to feelings, principles, or the like.” Only in the twentieth century did it come to include a personal reaction to an affront, described in my 1961 Webster’s as “a feeling of anger or resentment aroused by something regarded as an injustice or insult.”

That sense of anger or resentment, like the Greek god Janus, has two faces. One is good. It signals the presence of standards of behavior that, if violated, provoke swift and serious objections. It indicates that the public is not indifferent to offences against values. Where things are clearly wrong, moral outrage has the courage to say so. That’s good.

But there’s also a bad face. If outrage is characterized by anger and resentment, it can degenerate into the ranting repetitions of America’s talk radio. The result: a hardening of factional lines, as comity gives way to indignation. That hardening stifles the give-and-take of public discourse — a discourse that, if done right, regularly bleeds off underground pressures before they reach Old Faithful proportions. Otherwise anger and resentment lead to impatience, oversimplification, and hasty decision making, producing the complexities of Sarbanes-Oxley, the court challenges to the Do-Not-Call Registry, or the peculiarity of Howard Dean’s minority viewpoints potentially reaching majority status.

But back to California. Which of the faces of moral outrage put Arnold Schwarzenegger into office? Is he the result of well-meaning concern over the failure of the core moral values of responsibility, respect, fairness, honesty, and compassion? Or is he the result of a moralizing, manipulative, and tendentious ranting that simply lathered up public resentment?

Probably a bit of both. So which will prevail? The good face of outrage may bring a new firmness to a wobbling legislative tiller in this vast and unwieldy state. The bad face may set precedents for impatience and oversimplification in other states. If California government prospers under his leadership, the good face will have succeeded. If recall elections become a national fad and impatient balloting replaces longer-term governing, the bad will have prevailed.

(c)2003 Institute for Global Ethics

“Before there was the Internet, you could bring the bullies in. When the bullying goes online, you have to establish a paper trail. You have to get printouts. Oftentimes it’s not archived. If a child is being bullied in the lunchroom or the hallway, typically children see it. Online, if there’s no paper trail, no one sees it.”

– Robyn Jackson, a student support specialist at Pyle Middle School in Bethesda, Maryland. Efforts by Jackson and others to reduce online bullying by young students is profiled in a recent piece from the Washington Post. (“Cliques, Clicks, Bullies And Blogs,” Washington Post, Sep. 28)

WASHINGTON
U.S. biologists, concerned that their research could be misused by terrorists, last week unveiled a series of steps aimed at balancing the prized principle of scientific openness with the need for secrecy about potentially dangerous research.

The proposals were announced by a panel of the National Academy of Sciences, the nation’s leading scientific body, which said it hoped the voluntary system would preempt restrictive legislation.

The panel’s report, “Biotechnology Research in an Age of Terrorism,” would establish a three-step review and oversight system for research that could be misused to create bioweapons, reported the Reuters news agency.

The first step would require scientists to get approval for research projects from their local research institution’s scientific review board. If approved, the project would then be vetted by a federal advisory committee at the National Institutes of Health.

Lastly, the finished findings would be scrutinized by a new National Science Advisory Board for Biodefense — made up of scientists, experts, and journal editors, and housed at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services – tasked with weighing the merits of publishing against national security.

Seven areas of biological research would be subject to the review process, including research aimed at making viral agents more virulent, undetectable, or more easily transmitted, reported Reuters.

“This proposal is a key step in an evolving process to strike the right balance between national security concerns and the openness necessary for America’s research enterprise to thrive,” committee chairman Gerald Fink told Reuters. “We can do more now than we are doing and we should,” he added.

SAN FRANCISCO
Federal inmates and parolees cannot be forced to provide authorities with samples of their blood for storage in a DNA databank to solve future crimes, a federal appeals court ruled last week.

A three-member panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued the ruling, saying the forced submission of DNA samples violates the Fourth Amendment, which contains protections against unusual search and seizure.

The panel’s 2-to-1 ruling, comes in the case of Thomas Kincade, a convicted bank robber who refused to provide his parole officer with a blood sample to be analyzed and archived in a DNA databank.

Kincade, who had been released from prison, was sentenced to a four-month term for refusing to comply with the law — the DNA Analysis Backlog Elimination Act of 2000 — which targets people convicted of certain offenses.

Kincade argued that the law was unduly intrusive and violated his Fourth Amendment rights. The government disagreed, saying the process was no different than taking a criminal’s fingerprints, reported the Los Angeles Times.

Last week, the 9th Circuit panel sided with Kincade, saying that drawing blood to examine a person’s DNA is significantly different from an “examination of physical attributes that are generally exposed to public view.”

“Compulsory searches of the bodies of parolees such as Kincade require, at a minimum, reasonable suspicion” of a crime and cannot be undertaken simply for general law-enforcement purposes, Judge Stephen Reinhardt wrote for the panel’s majority.

Despite its good intentions, the 2000 law represents an “alarming trend whereby the privacy and dignity of our citizens (are) being whittled away by imperceptible steps,” Reinhardt warned, quoting a U.S. Supreme Court ruling on eavesdropping.

“The fact that these statutes currently affect only those individuals most susceptible to state supervision renders this threat no less important,” Reinhardt added, according to the Times.

The ruling puts not only the 2000 law in question, but also the stored samples and current convictions achieved by using the three-year-old database, noted the Associated Press.

The federal government is deciding whether or not to appeal last week’s ruling, which affects nine western states.

TORONTO
After emailing a plea for help to Microsoft Corp. founder Bill Gates, a Toronto policeman battling child porn is getting a helping hand from the company’s Canadian division, the Reuters news agency reported last week.

Det. Sgt. Paul Gillespie has been on the force for 25 years, putting much of his recent efforts into fighting the expanding trade in child porn.

Handicapped by an antiquated system, Gillespie ended a “really rotten day” of work last January by sending an email to Gates, asking for help.

“To be real honest, I didn’t expect anything back. I didn’t even save the email,” Gillespie told Reuters. “I just wondered if there was a possibility of designing … software to assist some of our investigators — at least so they don’t have to always go look at these awful images … and have nightmares every night.”

Gates answered Gillespie’s plea by forwarding the message to Microsoft Canada and asking for action. The company is now working with Gillespie on software to take a bit of the burden out of his workload.

The project, which has cost Microsoft $450,000 so far, will analyze pictures to detect child porn, archiving the offensive images into a searchable database and freeing investigators from the time-consuming and mentally disturbing task.

While the United States and United Kingdom have computer systems in place already, Canada has fallen behind, noted Reuters. Gillespie hopes the nations will join the system and pool their resources.

LONDON
The Vatican was criticized last week by several health experts for allegedly spreading bad information about condoms, the use of which it has long opposed, despite a growing crisis over the spread of HIV/AIDS.

The BBC is reporting that the Vatican is falsely telling people on four continents that condoms cannot stop the spread of HIV, an action the BBC claims is undermining preventative measures.

The Guardian newspaper, in its coverage of the controversy, claims condoms have proven 90-percent effective at blocking the spread of HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases.

The Vatican insists that condoms are not a step towards safety, claiming that both sperm and sexually transmitted diseases can easily pass through condoms — claims broadcast by cardinals, bishops, priests, and nuns on four continents, the BBC reported.

That claim was blasted last week by health experts from the United Nations, the World Health Organization (WHO), Christian Aid, and others.

“Statements like this are quite dangerous,” a WHO spokeswoman told the BBC. “We are facing a global pandemic which has already killed more than 20 million people and currently affects around 42 million. There is so much evidence to show that condoms don’t let sexually transmitted infections like HIV through. Anyone who says otherwise is just wrong.”

According to a new report released last week by the United Nations, the HIV virus is spreading rapidly through the world’s adolescents, infecting a person between the ages of 15 and 24 every 14 seconds.

That rate — accounting for half of all new HIV infections — means that nearly 6,000 young people become infected each day, a rate that threatens to disrupt national economies and destabilize poor countries, the UN Population Fund warned last week.

Special to Newsline from Canadian correspondent Errol P. Mendes

OTTAWA
Canada has dropped from eighth place to eleventh place in the most recent Corruption Perceptions Index from Transparency International (TI), which annually ranks countries based on perceptions of corruption in business and government circles.

The National Post reports that Wes Cragg, the head of TI’s Canadian chapter, says the drop is due to the scandals involving current and former prime ministers, members of Parliament, and Canadian companies, together with assertions of municipal corruption in Toronto.

“Canada suddenly doesn’t appear to be quite as clean as it used to be,” he added.

According to this year’s TI index of 133 countries, Finland is the least corrupt nation, while Nigeria, Haiti, Paraguay, and Myanmar are among the most corrupt. The United States placed eighteenth in the corruption index.

Mr. Cragg is reported to have stated that the results show that corruption is not limited to developing countries.

WASHINGTON
A proposed $22 billion deal between Boeing Co. and the U.S. Air Force came under increasing fire last week after a key member of a House committee indicated that he was reconsidering his support for the deal.

Rep. Ike Skelton (Mo.), the top Democrat on the House of Representatives’ Armed Services Committee, said the panel should be brought “up to date on the many reports and studies that have emerged since our hearings on the issue.”

Skelton’s second thoughts on the deal — a $22.4 billion plan by the Air Force to lease then buy 100 Boeing aircraft — come after a dogged effort by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) to raise red flags about the lease plan.

McCain long has condemned the proposed lease as a sweetheart deal for Beoing and a boondoggle for taxpayers, noting that it would cost $5.5 billion more than simply buying the planes outright, reported the Reuters news agency.

That assessment has been backed by studies from the Congressional Budget Office, the Congressional Research Service, the General Accounting Office, and the Institute for Defense Analysis, according to Reuters.

Despite the lease plan’s high cost, it has won the approval of three of four congressional vetting committees. The Air Force claims that leasing rather than buying will save high up-front costs and thus avoid depleting other defense projects.

Only McCain’s Senate Armed Services Committee has refused to give the deal a green light. Last week’s move by Skelton could signal a turning tide for the House’s approval of the Boeing lease, noted Reuters.

In related news, the Pentagon’s inspector general has begun an investigation into alleged conflicts of interest by Darleen Druyun, a former Air Force official who helped negotiate the Boeing deal.

Druyum, who subsequently left the Air Force to work for Boeing, also sold her home to a Boeing lawyer working on the lease deal, reported Dow Jones. Druyum’s daughter and son-in-law also are employed by Boeing.

Druyum’s lawyer last week said his client disclosed any possible conflicts of interest ahead of time and did nothing wrong, the Washington Post reported last week.

ATLANTA
Coca-Cola last week agreed to pay $540,000 to a whistle-blower accusing the company of firing him for exposing alleged wrongdoing that included financial fraud and rigged marketing tests, according to the New York Times.

Matthew Whitley, a former finance manager, sued Coke in May for $44.4 million, saying he had been cut loose one month after trying to contact his superiors about fraud at the firm, reported the Times.

Coke has called Whitley a “disgruntled employee” with an axe to grind after being passed over for a promotion and laid off with 1,000 others during a reorganization.

But Whitley’s claims, including accounting fraud, are now under investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission. Both Coke and Whitley have agreed to cooperate with those investigations.

While denying the bulk of Whitley’s claims, Coke has confessed to improper “financial arrangements” with a fountain machine supplier, resulting in a $9 million write-down, reported the Times.

Coke also has come clean about a rigged marketing test with the Burger King fast-food chain, according to the Times report.

As alleged by Whitley, Coke paid an intermediary to bring hundreds of children to Burger King to buy Frozen Coke, boosting sales and convincing the restaurant chain to invest $65 million into the beverage.

Coke has agreed to pay Burger King $21 million as an apology, noted the Times.

WASHINGTON
The U.S. Supreme Court last week refused to block a class-action case accusing the country’s largest foodservice company, Sodexho Marriott Services Inc., of discriminating against its black workers.

Sodexho Marriott says the court’s decision, which was made without comment, threatens to expose the nation’s businesses to class-action cases that could be filed whenever a minority is underrepresented among the top management.

Ten black managers at Sodexho Marriott sued the firm in March 2001, saying they were being blocked from pay raises and promotions and being shunted into dead-end accounts, reported the Associated Press.

In June 2002, a U.S. District Court judge granted class-action status to the suit on behalf of 2,600 current and former employees. After that decision was upheld on appeal, Sodexho Marriott took it to the Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court’s refusal to hear the case sends it back to lower court for trial proceedings, a move that Sodexho Marriott says could cost it up to $1 billion, all the while denying that it has a glass ceiling for its black employees.

“Until now, such allegations of glass-ceiling obstacles to upper-level management positions have never been held to permit a massive class action absent proof that the barriers to promotion emanate from discriminatory policies,” Sodexho Marriott lawyer Todd Horn wrote in the company’s appeal.

Although there may be few blacks in Sodexho Marriott management positions, the disparity is not a product of discrimination, but rather of mere circumstance, the firm insisted last week.

Plaintiffs are seeking compensatory and punitive damages, as well as reforms to the company’s promotion policies, reported Dow Jones.

PHILADELPHIA
A recently released board game based on the family favorite Monopoly is at the center of a brewing controversy, both in the United States and Great Britain.

“Ghettopoly” was created by a 28-year-old Chinese-American in Pennsylvania and bills itself as “the new stolen property fencing game from ghettopoly.com [that] sends players round ‘n’ round the ghetto trying to buy stolen property and acquire the most money,” according to a report from the Seattle Times.

International retail chain Urban Outfitters, headquartered in Philadelphia, found itself under attack recently for selling the game in its stores. Protests and calls for removal of the game — led mainly by black clergy and local NAACP chapters — have occurred in Philadelphia; St. Petersburg, Florida; Seattle, Washington; and New Haven, Connecticut.

Reverend Robert Shine, Sr., president of the Black Clergy of Philadelphia and Vicinity, is quoted by the Associated Press as saying at Philadelphia rally, “If we are silent on this issue, there is more of this type to come.” The BBC also quotes Shine as stating that the game is “a corporate endorsement of the denigration of African-Americans.”

But David Chang, the unapologetic inventor of the game who also plans on such follow-up titles as Redneckopoly, denied that the game is racist. “It’s not just focused on blacks. I’m not trying to single a race out. The whole point of me doing this is not so much stereotyping people, it’s poking fun at stereotyping. It’s meant to be satirical,” he told Seattle Times.

The AP reports that the game contains such properties as “Cheap Trick Avenue” and “Hernando’s Chop Shop” and also has cards reading, “You got yo whole neighborhood addicted to crack. Collect $50″ and “You’re a little short on loot, so you decided to stick up a bank. Collect $75.”

Responding to the mounting criticism and widespread outrage, Urban Outfitters last week pulled the game off its shelves. “Due to customer concerns, Urban Outfitters are no longer selling the game,” the company told BBC News Online.

The controversy is not likely to end there, however, as Hasbro, the owner of the original Monopoly game, says it is concerned about the unlicensed use of its intellectual property. In an email statement to the Seattle Times, Hasbro spokesman Mark Morris said, “We find this game to be reprehensible and a violation of our intellectual property rights. We have no record of ever being contacted by Mr. Chang and never gave him any approval to produce this game. We have sent a cease and desist letter to Mr. Chang.”

But as the Yale Daily News reports, not everyone is upset with the game. Noting that the game mocks not just blacks but others as well, Yale University student Seth Niedermayer said, TV’s “‘Saturday Night Live’ does the same thing. It makes fun of everyone. The movies, music, and pop culture all talk about the ghetto. The derogatory meaning isn’t there anymore. I don’t see why anyone would get upset over this game and not publicly upset about rappers or movies or any other pop culture items that pertain to the ghetto.”

From the Conference Board:

“Americans continue to grow more unhappy with their jobs, The Conference Board reports in a special survey released today.

“Less than half of all Americans say they are satisfied with their jobs — the highest level of discontent since the survey was first conducted in 1995. The decline in job satisfaction is found among workers of all ages, across all income brackets and regions….

“Most Americans are satisfied with their commutes. But only one worker in five is satisfied with the company’s promotions and bonus plans, and only about one in three is content with wages.

“‘The level of job satisfaction has been steadily on the decline since reaching nearly 59 percent in 1995,’ says Lynn Franco, drector of The Conference Board’s Consumer Research Center. ‘As technology transforms the workplace — accelerating the pace of activities, increasing expectations and productivity demands, and blurring the lines of work and play — workers are steadily growing more unhappy with their jobs.’

“Those aged 45-54 expressed the least amount of satisfaction — only 46 percent say they are satisfied with their employment. Those 65 and over claim the greatest level of satisfaction — 54 percent.

“Not surprisingly, satisfaction levels tend to rise with earnings. Householders earning less than $15,000 are less satisfied with their employment than those earning in excess of $50,000. But, even among the high-end earners the overall level of satisfaction has fallen over time. Back in 1995, 66.5 percent of householders earning more than $50,000 claimed to be satisfied with their jobs compared to 53.4 percent today.

“Regionally, the differences are quite pronounced. Workers expressing the least amount of satisfaction (about 43 percent claiming to be satisfied with their jobs) reside in New England (Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Vermont) and the West South Central states (Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Texas). Residents of the West North Central states (Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota) are the most satisfied workers — nearly 55 percent claim to be satisfied….

“Key findings:

• “The largest decline in overall job satisfaction — from 60.9 percent in 1995 to 47.2 percent today — occurred among householders aged 35-44. This age group was once the most satisfied, but is now second to last. The second largest decline took place among householders age 45-54, with the satisfaction level dropping from 57.3 percent to 46.1 percent. This group recorded the lowest level of satisfaction….
• “Promotion policies were the least satisfactory benefit of employment. Only 20.0 percent claimed they were satisfied, down from 23.4 percent in 1995….
• “Co-workers were … given a favorable rating. Despite a decline to 56.0 percent from 64.4 percent eight years ago, respondents ranked their fellow employees as the second most satisfying aspect of their jobs.”

“Greater even than the greatest discovery is to keep open the way to future discovery.”

– John Jacob Abel (U.S. scientist, 1857-1938)