For more information, see this week’s Research Report.

by Rushworth M. Kidder

“It’s been six years, doing this job,” said Christopher Christie, the U.S. attorney for New Jersey, “and I thought I could no longer be surprised by a combination of brazenness, arrogance, and stupidity. But the people elected in this state continue to defy description.”

It’s a telling comment on the 44 people arrested by the FBI in New Jersey last week. The two-year investigation, which netted (among others) three mayors, two state assemblymen, and five rabbis on money-laundering and corruption charges, had been launched under Mr. Christie.

What’s more telling, however, is that Christie wasn’t commenting on last week’s arrests. His words are nearly two years old and refer to the state’s last big corruption sweep, which hauled in 11 current and former elected officials in September 2007.

All of which raises interesting questions about, as he said, the “arrogance and stupidity” of the corrupt, who can’t seem to learn from an example only 22 months old. As a result, they’ve now given us a fresh example, an object lesson with more facets than a brilliant cut diamond. It’s a story that:

• Reawakens the nation’s disgust over a recession linked to the corruption of such notables as Wall Street guru Bernard Madoff, Texas billionaire Allen Stanford, and the leaders of giant insurer AIG
• Makes it easier to credit the accusations against former Louisiana congressman William Jefferson, currently on trial on charges that include bribery and racketeering
• Hits us just as news of mortgage fraud emerges, adding to our sense of vulnerability
• Alerts us to a grisly new scam, based on soliciting an organ donor to part with a kidney for $10,000, which the con man then sells for $160,000
• Speaks well of the FBI, which was able to keep the work of some 300 agents secret for two years
• Invites comments on New Jersey’s culture of political corruption, described by the state’s acting U.S. attorney, Ralph Marra, Jr., as “an ethics-free zone”
• Suggests that, despite the scale of this operation, scores of corrupt officials may remain untouched on the fringes of its tangled web of relationships

Given all of this, the 44 schemers arrested last week may seem a bit daft. With the crime-doesn’t-pay lesson of 2007 still ringing in their ears, why risk it? For the size of the bribes involved — typically less than half the cost of a new midsize car — why bother? And with today’s movies and TV programs chock full of details about hidden cameras, informants wearing wires, and dumpster-diving investigators, why not be more cautious?

Sadly enough, in any long-standing culture of corruption, it may not be arrogance but experience, not stupidity but common sense that drives such behaviors. If corruption is so endemic and accepted, and if these 44 are but a small fraction of those merrily on the take, perhaps only a fool would choose to get elected and not partake of the spoils of victory.

Grim as that sounds, it’s an important warning. It reminds us that you don’t fight corruption merely by removing corrupt officials. You do it by reforming corrupt cultures. Yes, culture change starts by getting good people into office — by voting as much for character as for experience, and by electing people capable of doing good things in the right way. But culture change continues by helping elected officials maintain high standards. That requires vigilance at the top of the political pyramid, from those who can either support vigorous efforts to extirpate corruption or turn a blind eye to it. That vigilance once drew on the watchdog efforts of investigative journalists — a breed that’s rapidly vanishing as newspapers dwindle. It now relies largely on the work of law-enforcement organizations as they more slowly (though more spectacularly) ratchet up the risks of getting caught, as happened last week.

But mostly the reforming of culture involves the action of citizens who, like readers of this publication, care about ethics. And therein lies a challenge. Not surprisingly, those attracted to the subject of ethics are themselves ethical. They tend to live among ethical people and expect ethical behavior from others. They’re quick to spot and appreciate acts of integrity. Having faith in the goodness of humanity, they often are more trusting of others and less skeptical than their peers.

Unless they’re alert, however, that heightened sense of probity puts them at risk in two ways. First, it can so sharpen their sensibilities that they take moral offense where others might be more forgiving — and makes them sometimes more given to holding their noses in repugnance than to rolling up their sleeves for a fight. More dangerous, their faith in others can set them up for scams, cons, and deceptions that the more cynical would suspect and resist. Even if they don’t become the targets of fraud, they can be driven toward despair when stories like the New Jersey scandal come along.

But despair doesn’t change cultures. Neither does cynicism. Reform falls to those who retain their faith that goodness can and should triumph — not as Pollyannas hoping that everyone will be nice, but as street-smart sentinels, alert to trickery and fraud, who nevertheless believe that most people are inherently ethical. When such people withdraw, they leave the culture to the scoundrels. But when they’re willing to take action, there’s no limit to what they can do to change the world, including New Jersey.

©2009 Institute for Global Ethics

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Questions or comments? Write to newsline@globalethics.org.

In last week’s commentary, Rushworth Kidder recounted the story of a camp trustee and volunteer named Terri, who allowed a child to use live bait in defiance of a lake’s ban and in the face of apathy from camp counselors who looked the other way.

The ban was instituted to protect the waters against introduction of alien species.

Dr. Kidder related the story to financial-sector employees who, “minding their business by their own metaphorical lakesides,” observed corruption and rule breaking but let it pass.

We received many emails in reaction.

Almost all respondents saw the issue as a straightforward case of obeying rules. “Terri should have told the kid no and given the reason, and I’d bet the kid would have stopped,” writes one reader. “It’s when bystanders remain bystanders only and do not speak that evil prospers, and it does not matter what the question is.”

Another concurs, noting that Terri now knows she should have stopped the boy, and may now be thinking of the words of Robert Burns: “Of all sad words of tongue and pen, the saddest are these: It might have been.”

“She should have spoken up,” agrees another reader, “as it was a great teaching moment that she could have used, not only for the kid(s) but for the counselors as well. In fact, I believe that providing the counselors that behavior example would have had at least as much value as providing the ethical lesson to the campers.”

Two readers stress that Terri should have spoken to the instructor who looked the other way. “I believe that Terri should have taken it up with the instructor and asked him/her to enforce the rules,” contends one. “If he/she did not do so, she should have gone the whistle-blowing route. The real problem, in my view, is the instructor.”

“Terri could have spoken to the instructor — adult to adult,” another reader concludes. “If the instructor just shrugged and let this boy’s rule violation pass, what else was she allowing to happen?”

But a dissenting view comes from this reader: “The boy was correct to use his worms, because worms are not live fish that can be an introduction of foreign species. Children need to learn that, in general, a rule is made for a good reason, but a rule can be broken for a good reason, especially when there is no harm done to the intent of the rule. Children should learn to understand the reason for following a rule, and be allowed to break the rule when it is discovered there is no reason to obey the rule (as in the case that a worm is not a foreign fish species).”

– Compiled by Ethics Newsline® editor Carl Hausman

“We are so exhausted. Our nerves are about to snap from this torture. The officials who were responsible not only have not been punished, they have been promoted.”

– Chinese mother Song Heping, talking to the New York Times about her family’s efforts to recover the missing education records of her child. The Times reports on the plight of top-level Chinese students whose records are stolen and sold by local officials to friends or underperforming students’ families.

The con effectively sentences the rightful students to a lifetime of back-breaking and low-paying jobs as well as massive debt since employers refuse to hire students with missing records. The Chinese government meanwhile often rejects any inquiries into stolen records, placing the students’ parents under police surveillance and repeatedly detaining them until they drop their efforts, parents told the Times.

Source: New York Times, July 27.

New Jersey stung by corruption scandal termed massive even by New Jersey standards; Palm Beach County seeks to blunt reputation for corruption by convening ethics commission; incoming Alaska governor wants end to leaks of information related to ethics probes

VARIOUS DATELINES
Across the United States, ethics at the state level dominated headlines last week. Among the top stories:

• A massive corruption sting in New Jersey shocked residents of a state who thought they had seen it all as mayors, councilmen, and religious leaders were rounded up as part of a two-year probe into corruption and money laundering. Acting U.S. attorney Ralph Marra, Jr., said the arrests demonstrated the continuing, widespread scope of corruption in New Jersey, where more than 130 public officials have been prosecuted in the past several years. “For these defendants, corruption was a way of life,” Marra said, according to the Newark Star-Ledger. “They existed in an ethics-free zone.” An FBI agent quoted by the Economist observed that “the list of names and titles of those arrested today sounds like a roster for a community leaders meeting” that was held not in a town hall but in an “FBI booking room.”
• Commissioners in Florida’s Palm Beach County, which has been rocked by a succession of ethics scandals, agreed to create an ethics commission to probe government wrongdoing, reports the Palm Beach Post. Writes the Post’s George Bennett: “With three former commissioners in federal prison, a grand jury recommending sweeping reforms and Time magazine branding the county ‘the new capital of Florida corruption,’ commissioners had little choice.”
• Sean Parnell, the incoming governor of Alaska, wants the state’s attorney general to provide recommendations on how to prevent leaks of confidential information from ethics probes. Fairbanks television station KTVA reports that Parnell says leaking ethics information is an abuse of the executive branch’s ethics act and “a violation of due process.” The state’s resigning governor, Sarah Palin, claimed that arbitrary and politically motivated ethics complaints were one reason for her resignation.

Sources: Economist, July 24 — Newark Star-Ledger, July 24 — Palm Beach Post, July 23 — KTVA, July 23.

For more information, see:  Related Newsline story, July 13 — Related Newsline story, July 6 — Related Newsline story, June 15 — Related Newsline story, Sep. 29, 2008 — Related Newsline story, Sep. 10, 2007.

Issue vaults to front pages when president says police acted “stupidly”

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.
An incident involving race, ethics, and sensibilities echoed from a Cambridge doorstep to the White House last week, as President Obama weighed in on the arrest of black scholar Henry Louis Gates.

Gates charged that his arrest, after he and another black man were seen attempting to force open the door of Gates’s house, which Gates said was jammed, was racially motivated. The officer who arrested Gates said that the professor became unruly.

The arrest stirred vigorous, sometimes vituperative debate in various forums, including unsurprisingly talk radio. Critics claimed the arrest was symptomatic of residual racism. Supporters of the police and police officials, including the Cambridge police commissioner, insisted that the officer acted appropriately and without any racial motivation, the Boston Globe reports.

On Monday, the Cambridge police department released the audio recording of the 911 call that brought police to Gates’s house. The caller does not allude to race, says she sees suitcases on the porch, and notes, “I don’t know if they live there and they just had a hard time with their key, but I did notice they had to use their shoulders to try to barge in,” reports the Boston Globe.

The incident vaulted to the front pages of major newspapers and to the top of the lineup on the network news after President Obama, asked about the case during a press conference, conceded he did not know all the particulars but declared that Cambridge police had “acted stupidly.”

Obama’s remarks, reports the Hill, drew the ire of police unions and the officer himself, a sergeant who had taught classes on how to avoid racial profiling.

By week’s end, Gates and the officer who arrested him both said they would accept the president’s defusing offer to meet at the White House for a beer, reports UPI.

Sources: Boston Globe, July 27 — UPI, July 25 — Boston Globe, July 23 — Hill, July 23.

For more information, see:  Related Newsline story, June 29 — Related Newsline story, June 15 –  Related Newsline story, June 1 — Related Newsline story, Feb. 23 — Related Newsline story, July 14, 2008.

Some say he’s served his time and that’s that; others argue nature of offense should keep him off the gridiron for good

NEW YORK
One of the most prominent animal-ethics stories in recent years is back in the news following the National Football League’s (NFL) reinstatement of convicted felon Michael Vick, who was just released from prison.

Vick was released from federal custody last week after serving a 23-month sentence for arranging and bankrolling dog fights. According to the Washington Post, he met with NFL commissioner Roger Goodell late last week.

On Monday, Goodell gave Vick an opening to return to the gridiron, making him “eligible to sign with a team, join it during training camp and play in the final two preseason games,” notes the New York Times. Goodell said he would decide whether Vick can return to regular-season games in mid-October.

The news immediately prompted controversy. The Cincinnati Enquirer’s Paul Daugherty defended Vick’s return, arguing that the NFL is not known as a bastion of good character, adding that Vick has served his term, and insisting that the NFL has no business setting conduct standards. Sports Illustrated’s George Dorhmann took the opposite view, saying that in addition to Vick’s animal cruelty, the facts that he gambled and deceived the league merit a lifetime ban.

Another player in the drama is Wayne Pacelle, the president of the Humane Society, who has enlisted Vick in a televised campaign against dog fighting.

Commenting on the possibility of Vick’s return, Pacelle told USA Today that it raises “basic questions about redemption. Michael Vick has suffered serious consequences, but he’s got to get out of the gate in a major way with our anti-dogfighting campaign…. He apologized to the fans and the kids, but he didn’t really take ownership of the cruelty.”

Sources: New York Times, July 27 — USA Today, July 24 — Atlanta Journal-Constitution, July 24 — Washington Post, July 24 — Kansas City Star, July 23.

For more information, see:  Related Newsline story, May 4 — Related Newsline story, Aug. 27, 2007 –  Related Newsline story, Aug 20, 2007 — Related Newsline story, July 30, 2007 — Related Newsline story, July 23, 2007.

Effort is part of Kremlin initiative to teach morality after period of corruption and turbulence

MOSCOW
Russian president Dmitry Medvedev last week announced a pilot project to require the schoolchildren to take classes in religion or ethics.

The Associated Press reports that the proposal is part of a Kremlin effort to teach morality in a turbulent period of corruption and violence that followed the collapse of the totalitarian Soviet Union.

Preteens at about 12,000 schools are expected to participate in the project, which will offer a course in secular ethics or studies of various religions, including Buddhism, Islam, Judaism, and the Russian Orthodox Church.

Medvedev also said he will establish a permanent chaplain service in the armed forces, reports Moscow-based newspaper Kommersant.

English-language Russian daily Moscow Times reports that proponents say religious and ethics education would boost the morals and morale of the younger generations, while critics warn that the project could degenerate into a vehicle for religious propaganda.

If successful, the plan could be extended to all students in Russia, according to the BBC.

Sources: AP, July 22 — BBC, July 22 — Kommersant, July 22 — Moscow Times, July 22.

For more information, see:  Related Newsline story, Mar. 2 –  Related Newsline story, Feb. 23 –  Related Newsline story, Feb. 9 –  Related Newsline story, Feb. 9.

U.K. medical journal says ethics were violated at Guantánamo; discovery by Chinese scientists raises new moral questions about embryos and cloning; White House releases details of visits by heath care executives

VARIOUS DATELINES
Ethics issues surrounding Guantánamo, stem cell research, and health policy continued to dominate the news last week. Among the stories:

• In the Lancet, the influential U.K. medical journal, an article concludes that the use of medical personnel at the U.S. prison camp at Guantánamo Bay forced them to violate their ethics codes. The Agence France-Presse reports that the study’s authors concluded that the roles that medical professionals assumed “damaged the integrity of the physicians working for the military and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)…. These physicians had a conflict of loyalty because of their ethical obligations to their imprisoned patients and the Bush administration’s demands to further the goals and interests of military commanders and intelligence officials.” Among the alleged violations were involvement of doctors in force-feeding and the use of behavioral scientists during interrogations.
• Press reports from around the world noted that a new type of stem cell production that does not involve the controversial use of destroyed embryos could sidestep many of the ethics problems involved in stem cell research. The debate heated up again, reports the Los Angeles Times, after scientists in China reported growing healthy mice from mouse skin cells.
• Following a lawsuit from a government watchdog group, the Obama administration released a list of health care industry executives who have visited the White House to consult on the president’s new health care initiative. ABC News reports that the administration previously had refused a request by Citizens for Ethics and Responsibility in Washington because it believed presidential records are exempt from public disclosure laws. But the White House reversed its stance, reports ABC, with White House counsel Gregory Craig saying the discretionary release was merited by “the compelling public interest in the health care debate and the president’s goal of increasing transparency in government.”

Sources: AFP, July 26 — Times of London, July 26 — Los Angeles Times, July 24 — ABC News, July 23.

For more information, see:  Related Newsline story, May 25 –  Related Newsline story, Apr. 13 –  Related Newsline story, Jan. 19 –  Related Newsline story, June 16, 2008 –  Related Newsline story, June 1, 2004.

Nude video of reporter, name of complainant in sexual-assault suit, and plans to put books online emerge as contentious issues

VARIOUS DATELINES
Privacy in the age of digital media is an spawning practical and ethical challenges, according to several press reports. Among them:

• An apparent nude video of ESPN sports reporter Erin Andrews was not only one of the most sought-after items in Google searches last week, but also was the focus of a media-ethics debate. The video of Andrews in a hotel purportedly was taken through a peephole leading to an adjoining room. While Connecticut-based ESPN has not reported on the incident, reports the Hartford Courant, many mainstream media gave the story heavy play. The New York Post stirred controversy when it published edited and partially obscured stills from the video to accompany a story about the incident. ESPN says it will prosecute whomever is responsible for taking the video, but the Courant notes that while the privacy issues involved appear straightforward from a moral standpoint, legally there is a great deal of unexplored territory involving new technologies that are capable of secretly taking and disseminating video.
• Journalists faced an ethical quandary when deciding whether to use the name of a woman who filed a civil sexual assault suit against Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger, reports Poynter OnLine, a publication of a Florida media think-tank. Poynter’s Al Thompson writes that newsrooms generally withhold the names of alleged sexual assault victims so they don’t cause further harm. But in this case, Thompson writes that he leans toward using the name: “Seeking compensation in a civil suit affords one less protection than pressing to jail an attacker in order to protect society…. And it becomes even more difficult to defend concealing her identity when Roethlisberger named her in the news conference in which he denied the allegations.”
• Watchdog group Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is asking supporters to pressure Google into building significant privacy protections into its Book Search service, PC World reports. Book Search, which allows users to search for and sometimes access the text of books online, would give Google access to personal information, argues the EFF’s Hugh D’Andrade. “If you suspect you may have a serious disease, you can go into a bookstore and browse for books about your illness, find one that’s useful, and buy it with cash. And you can rest assured that your insurance premiums won’t increase as a result, because there is no way your insurance company can find out about your choice of reading material,” D’Andrade wrote in an EFF blog post. “But this privacy could be eroded as books enter the digital world, where every click leaves a record.” In a web post, Google said it would protect users’ privacy, though it was unable to provide specifics because a court settlement to allow digitization of books has not yet been finalized.

Sources: Hartford Courant, July 24 — Poynter OnLine, July 24 — PC World, July 25.

For more information, see: EFF post, July 23.

But is high-frequency trading unfair to investors without the electronic edge?

NEW YORK
There’s a new ethics wrinkle to stock trading, reports the New York Times: the use of extremely high-powered computers to scan the market, analyze trends, and place orders with lighting speed — a power the individual investor cannot hope to match.

The Times’s Charles Duhigg notes that regulations were altered to allow computer-generated trades, but that the ordinary user of a PC cannot hope to compete with Wall Street’s computers: “Powerful algorithms — ‘algos,’ in industry parlance — execute millions of orders a second and scan dozens of public and private marketplaces simultaneously. They can spot trends before other investors can blink, changing orders and strategies within milliseconds.”

“High-frequency traders often confound other investors by issuing and then canceling orders almost simultaneously,” Duhigg continues. “Loopholes in market rules give high-speed investors an early glance at how others are trading. And their computers can essentially bully slower investors into giving up profits — and then disappear before anyone even knows they were there.”

The ethical issue: While some big companies are making billions of dollars through high-frequency trading, defenders say that if we want to encourage innovation, we have to reward the innovators. Critics, though, say that if we move toward a two-tiered market of high-powered investors and everybody else, the average investor may not feel he or she has a shot at getting a fair deal.

Source: New York Times, July 23.

For more information, see:  Related Newsline story, July 6 –  Related Newsline Commentary, June 15 –  Related Newsline story, June 15 –  Related Newsline story, May 25 –  Related Newsline story, May 25.

Conservative Republicans see rosy picture; low-income Americans see bleaker view

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

“Most Americans rate the nation’s health care as no better than average when compared with health care in other industrialized countries. Just 15% say health care in this country is the ‘best in the world,’ while 23% rate it as ‘above average’; about six-in-ten (59%) view U.S. health care as either ‘average’ (32%) or ‘below average’ (27%).

“The Pew Research Center for the People and the Press’ May 2009 study found that health care receives relatively poor ratings compared with other major U.S. institutions and systems. About eight in-ten (82%) say either that the U.S. military is the best in the world (42%) or that it is above average (39%). Majorities also rate the nation’s scientific achievements (65%) and standard of living (63%) as either the best in the world or above average, while half (50%) say this about the U.S. political system.

“The economy is the only item on the survey that receives a rating lower than health care….

“The stark political divisions evident in the current debate over health care are mirrored in opinions about how the health care system compares with those in other industrialized countries….

“Conservative Republicans stand out in their positive assessments of U.S. health care. Two-thirds (66%) say America’s health care is either the best in the world or above average. Just 39% of moderate and liberal Republicans agree. There is a smaller ideological divide within the Democratic Party — with 75% of liberals rating U.S. health care as average or below average compared with 67% of moderates and conservatives.

“Americans with lower family incomes rate health care in the U.S. less positively than those with higher incomes. Roughly two-thirds (65%) of people with annual household incomes of less than $30,000 describe U.S health care as average or below average compared with other industrialized countries, while only about a third (32%) see it as the best in the world or above average. By comparison, half of Americans earning $100,000 or more say America’s health care is the best in the world or above average….”

For the full release, July 24, click here.

“They can because they think they can.”

– Virgil (Classical Roman poet, 70 BCE – 19 BCE)