Photo by 'dok1' (Flickr)

The Dorchester School was a private boarding school in Fairbrook, Delaware that accepted students from sixth grade through senior year in high [...]]]> I am speaking to a high school group later today about ethical dilemmas. I prepared this scenario to illustrate the four types of right-vs.-right ethical dilemma paradigms:

Photo by 'dok1' (Flickr)

The Dorchester School was a private boarding school in Fairbrook, Delaware that accepted students from sixth grade through senior year in high school. Founded by a husband-and-wife team of educators who fled the horrors of Nazi Germany, the school was famous for its humanistic philosophy and progressive values. It was also held up as an exemplar of academic success and good ethics.

Students from Dorchester were high achieving, honest and empathetic people. The Dorchester ethics code was a simple one, borrowed from West Point: “A Dorchester student does not lie, cheat, or steal, nor tolerate those who do.”

Megan Allen and Jane Friedman were Dorchester juniors. Megan had attended Dorchester since sixth grade. Jane, on the other hand, started in tenth grade. She found the transition very difficult at first, but Megan took her under her wing and made her feel welcome. Jane, who was a naturally shy person, credited Megan with turning what could have been a very lonely time into something that was beginning to show promise. Jane also found herself drawn to Megan’s charisma, as many in the student body were – she had that certain something that just made people want to be with her.

So Jane was crestfallen when she was looking for a stick of gum in Megan’s backpack and saw a printout of what looked like an Internet term paper. They had just submitted their first of two major papers for English. Looking at the paper in Megan’s backpack, it appeared that she had copied it pretty much word for word.

Jane was stunned. This seemed so unlike Megan. They studied together frequently, and Jane knew her not to be a cheater. Yet here was what looked like proof. She built up her courage and finally confronted Megan with what she had seen, hoping there was some logical explanation.

There was a logical explanation, but it did not make Jane feel any better. Megan had indeed purchased an online term paper. She was under so much stress, she said, with nightly lacrosse practice and so much other homework – she just cracked. She knew it was wrong. She promised that it would never happen again.

Jane wondered what she should do. On the one hand, this was an aberration and she felt sure that Megan would not do it again. And, she owed so much to Megan. On the other hand, the school’s rule was very clear: Not only was it wrong for Megan to plagiarize, but the school ethics code suggested that it was now Jane’s duty to tell the school what she knew.

While Jane pondered, Daniel Cray had his own decision to worry about. He was Megan’s English teacher. He knew Megan well, and he knew her parents well. They were generous donors to the school, athletic boosters, and always showed up at school meetings and functions. Yet, something about Megan’s recent paper did not seem right. He could not put his finger on it, but it seemed off. He pasted a particularly unique sentence into a search engine just to see what he would find – hoping that he would find no hits.

Unfortunately, he found a hit on an overseas online term paper site. Megan’s paper had clearly been purchased from a paper mill.

Cray pondered his next move. He certainly was within his rights to fail Megan. In fact, school policy suggested that was what he ought to do. However, he did have some leeway. He knew Megan well, and knew that this year she had been under a great deal of stress. She had never done something like this before.

Cray confronted Megan, and she confessed, giving the same explanation she had given Jane. In fact, she asked if Jane had told, and Cray said no, that he had figured it out himself.

Cray ultimately decided to give Megan a zero for the paper, but allow her to write another one at half credit. It was possible, if she did perfectly for the rest of the semester, that she could get a B. She was normally an A student, so this was not a small punishment. But Cray could have failed her for the whole class.

Cray wrote Dorchester’s head of school a memo about what he had decided. Cray felt that this was the kind of issue the head would want to know about.

Holly Blackwell now had her own problem to contend with. Blackwell was the Dorchester lacrosse coach. While Dorchester was a real success in many respects, it was not known as an athletic school. Truth be told, most of its teams fielded losing seasons. That was OK with most members of the community. However, this year the lacrosse team was different. Headed by Megan, who had innate skills and athleticism, the team was just a few games away from winning their regional championship. Dorchester was set to play a semifinal match against a tough team two days after Cray sent his memo.

Blackwell knew that, above all, Dorchester students and faculty were expected to do the right thing. And there was a policy that if a student is suspended for cheating they could no longer play sports for the remainder of the season. On one hand, Blackwell knew that, at a minimum, she should probably not allow Megan to play in the semifinal match.

However, on the other hand, Megan had not been suspended. She had gotten a different form of punishment. And, weighing even more heavily on Blackwell’s mind, was the fact that it would mean a great deal to the team – and to the Dorchester community – if they could say that they had at least made it to the finals. Without Megan they did not have much a chance.

Frank Shanahan also had a decision to wrestle with. As head of the Dorchester School, it was his job to set the right tone at the top. He strongly believed he had to lead by example. He always worked hard to figure out the right thing to do.

In this case, Shanahan thought Cray’s decision was right. Plagiarism could not be tolerated, but there were unusual circumstances. It was not right to be strict all the time in every case. He thought Cray had found a good middle ground.

However, Shanahan was worried about another facet of the issue. It seemed clear that Jane Friedman had known about the cheating and had not reported it.  The part of the school’s ethics code about “not tolerating those who do” was meant to cover just such a situation. Students are not supposed to put up with unethical behavior from their peers.

But, the episode had been handled and everyone was now moving forward. Cray had confronted Megan possibly before Jane had a chance to tell anyone. It would be easy to just move ahead and in many respects that would be the right thing to do. Shanahan made it a point to know as many students as well as he could – he knew Jane and knew that any punishment he could administer would likely be devastating to her. She was a person who had needed nurturing when she arrived and had begun to thrive as a result. Punishment for an ethics code violation would be a big step backwards for her.

However, Shanahan was worried about the precedent, too. That last part of the ethics code was tough to live up to – if he started to cut corners he could imagine that pretty soon it would be the piece of the code that everyone ignored.

The four dilemma paradigms are:

• Truth vs. Loyalty
• Justice vs. Mercy
• Individual vs. Community
• Short Term vs. Long Term

Tomorrow I will be leading a session on ethics at the Sorensen Institute for Political Leadership. I typically present a scenario with multifaceted ethical dilemmas embedded, and talk through it. For tomorrow’s talk I have written a new scenario and I thought I would share it here.

How many ethical [...]]]>

On The Lam

Tomorrow I will be leading a session on ethics at the Sorensen Institute for Political Leadership. I typically present a scenario with multifaceted ethical dilemmas embedded, and talk through it. For tomorrow’s talk I have written a new scenario and I thought I would share it here.

How many ethical dilemmas can you spot? Who has them? What are they?

On The Lam

Michigan state Senator John Cooper looked out the window of his home office at the pond that took up part of his back yard. A duck was paddling in the water. It was early March, and much of the pond was still frozen. But there was an area near the shore where a storm drain let out, causing the water to churn a bit. This spot typically unfroze first.

He turned back to his computer screen. He was composing a letter to his chief of staff, Alice Monroe. She had very quickly become his right hand when he was first elected, and had served with him through three terms. She seemed to know everything about Lansing, and Cooper had come to rely on her.

He had written “Dear Alice,” but did not know where to go from there. He was trying to decide whether to fire her or not. He thought back and reflected on how strange the last three weeks had been.

It had started with a trial balloon that the state’s new governor, Frederick Thurston, had floated in his State of the State address. This was his first such address. He had been elected in a close election running on a strong environmental platform. This had surprised observers of Michigan politics, since so much of public life revolved around unions, manufacturing and the economy in the state. Newspaper columnists were wondering if it was a sign of change.

Thurston had proposed in his State of the State message a new regulation for businesses — they would need to pay for vastly expanded environmental studies that included a section on likely climactic impacts of any new land use proposal. Republicans and business leaders in the state had howled at the idea, since it seemed likely that the result would be that no new projects of any sort would be initiated. Michigan needed its economy to get moving again, and Cooper was not alone in his string feeling that this was a step in the opposite direction.

Thurston again surprised political observers by getting his proposal sponsored and submitted as a House bill and it passed quickly. The bill was presented to the Senate and somehow it was clear that every Senate Democrat was planning on voting for the measure. That was when things turned very strange.

Cooper had gotten a call from Janice Brandt, the Senate Republican leader. The 38 members of the Senate were evenly divided and the Democrats enjoyed a one-person majority in the person of the Lieutenant Governor.

Brandt had decided to follow the lead of Wisconsin a few years ago, and ordered all Senate Republicans to go into hiding out of state. By doing this, they could prevent a quorum, since a majority of members had to be present. This would stop action on the bill.

Cooper had grave misgivings about the tactic, but he went along. He holed up in a Super 8 Motel in South Bend, Indiana. The stalemate went on and on. The Senate president, Frank Marshall, ordered the wayward senators back and had the State Police look for them. Every day, the Republican Senators would hold a conference call where they strategized on what to do. Day by day, it looked like the resolve of the group was slipping a bit. They could not continue their disappearing act forever.

Every morning the Senators held their call — and every afternoon there was a similar call for staff. In this call, Cooper knew, Louis Parker, the chief of staff to Brandt, stressed the need for the Senate staffers to do what they could to try to keep their legislators in line. Chinks in the armor were to be reported up the chain of command.

Senators each had two staffers. These staffers typically had divided loyalties. While their job was to support their Senator, in practice they were beholden to the larger party structure. A staffer might find herself or himself working for many legislators over their career, as the party kept a list of good staff candidates. Some legislators hired people they already knew, or even family members, but the reality of legislating was that it worked best if someone on staff knew the ropes from the get-go.

After three weeks of living out of a suitcase in secret, Cooper had had enough. He thought Brandt’s plan had backfired and gone too far. He decided to go back to Lansing. He asked Alice Monroe, his chief of staff, to meet him at the office one Wednesday. That Tuesday night he drove back home to Brighton.

He drove to the Capitol and parked his car in his reserved space. He never made it to his office. Brandt’s chief of staff, Louis Parker, was waiting for him in the garage, glaring. As Cooper got out of his car, Parker tore into him and described what life would be like as a legislative pariah. No committee memberships. No privileges. No way to get anything done whatsoever for his constituents. “We will crush you,” he said. Cooper pushed back, standing on principle, but Parker finally convinced him to at least take a day to think about it. There was some headway in negotiations and one day might do the trick. Cooper drove home, fuming. It was obvious that Monroe had betrayed him to Parker.

Now, with little to do but wait, he thought about what to say to Alice.  And, whether to head back to Indiana.

(Photo: Flickr user hoyasmeg)

The program is an ethics-based soup-to-nuts campaign school, and I provide the ethics training piece. My bit is part lecture, part case study, and part small group exercises. I [...]]]> Tomorrow, I will be leading a four-day candidate training program with the University of Virginia’s Sorensen Institute for Political Leadership. More on that program here.

The program is an ethics-based soup-to-nuts campaign school, and I provide the ethics training piece. My bit is part lecture, part case study, and part small group exercises. I thought you might be interested to look at one of the hypothetical scenarios I developed for use in this (and other) programs.

The following scenario is based on a real event. See if you can guess which one. More important, see if you can answer what I ask students to answer: In this story, who has an ethical dilemma, when do they have it, and what is it? There is more than one answer.

All The News That Fits

Bill Jones is an investigative reporter at the Fallswood Bee, one of the major metropolitan daily newspapers in a Midwestern state. It is October of a presidential election year, and the state is considered an important “swing state.” Many see this election as pivotal and emotions are high. The Bee’s editorial pages have endorsed the challenger.

American rock legend Freddy “Snake” Smith has planned a brief tour to raise money and support for the presidential challenger. There is a stop planned for Fallswood in the second weekend in October, to be held at a venue in an area of town that many consider “tough.”

Janice Frederick is Editor of the Fallswood Bee. Concerned for the nonpartisan reputation of her newspaper, she issues a memo one week before the concert. “To all Weekend, General Assignment, and Political Reporters,” she writes. “Please be reminded that the Bee’s ethics policy bars Bee reporters and editors from ‘activities that conflict with your status as objective news professionals.’ This includes concerts that are held as political fundraisers.”

Come Monday after the concert, editor Frederick has a nagging hunch. She asks a Bee reporter who lives near the concert hall, Karen Archer, whether she knows of any Bee reporters who attended the “Snake” Smith concert. Archer is a good friend of Jones and works with him on various stories. She says she saw Jones walking on the sidewalk in front of the concert hall with his wife. Jones, when asked, says he did see the “Snake” Smith show. His wife, a freelance rock and roll writer, needed to attend for an article she was working on, and asked him to come along to provide a sense of safety in the rough neighborhood.

Frederick suspends Jones from the newspaper for three days for violating the Bee’s ethics code after being explicitly reminded not to. Jones contests the suspension to publisher Frank Shanahan, saying that, as an investigative reporter, the memo did not apply to him because it referred to other kinds of reporters instead. Frederick says that’s irrelevant, as the ethics code applies to all reporters, not just those she named in the memo. The issue has garnered unwelcome attention from many quarters: other reporters are threatening to strike; the incumbent’s political campaign is calling “foul;” and the press trade journals are watching Shanahan’s decision because it is considered unusual for a publisher to overturn actions by editors as this impairs journalistic objectivity.

'Day 36/366.....I Voted' by Flickr user Denise Cross

A quick scan shows [...]]]> The state I happen to live in is at the forefront of an interesting wave in public policy, one which is inevitable. The Maryland Board of Elections is considering taking actions to regulate the social media usage of candidates and campaigns.

'Day 36/366.....I Voted' by Flickr user Denise Cross

A quick scan shows that many candidates and campaigns have begun to tap into the low-cost power of the social Web — many creating Facebook Pages and using them as campagn hubs. But this is an area that is unregulated and unwatched. (Here is an interesting article from the Manila Times going in-depth into the issue in their local context.)

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, according to DC-area news powerhouse WTOP:

In campaign races across the country, people are setting up fake Facebook and Twitter accounts in order to spread false information about rival candidates. . . . The board is working on rules that would allow the board to put an official seal of authenticity on social network sites that are used by campaigns.

“We would require the authority line on that Facebook page, somewhere on it in visible fashion,” says Jared DeMarinis, director of candidacy and campaign finance for the Maryland Board of Elections.

Twitter accounts would be subject to the rules, too, and spreading lies would be subject to the same rules as currently apply to spreading fake literature.

One of may favorite newspapers, the Cleveland Plain Dealer, is embroiled in a controversy that raises some important questions, few of which have easy answers.

Reporters [...]]]>

My latest article on my blog at the Washington Times Communities, Public Square Today, is now live: The Plain Dealer And The Ethics Of Disclosure. Here it is:

One of may favorite newspapers, the Cleveland Plain Dealer, is embroiled in a controversy that raises some important questions, few of which have easy answers.

Reporters at that paper have long run critical stories highlighting some of what they have termed “unusual actions” by Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Judge Shirley Strickland Saffold. These range from odd dispute resolution strategies (ordering lawyers in a civil suit to remain in a conference room for days until they settled their clients’ disagreement) to more serious suggestions of wrongdoing (“the judge routinely diverted dozens of criminal cases to one Cleveland lawyer and authorized him to collect questionable fees, at a cost of tens of thousands of dollars to taxpayers,” says the Plain Dealer).

Gavel by Flickr user walknboston

Today, the Plain Dealer reported that “Someone using a personal e-mail account of Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Judge Shirley Strickland Saffold has written anonymous, opinionated online comments relating to some of the judge’s high-profile cases.” These comments were written as responses to the Plain Dealer’s online articles and blogs under the handle “lawmiss.” The judge’s daughter has stepped forward and taken responsibility for the lawmiss comments, but her admission appears to hold little water.

The Plain Dealer discovered the Saffold connection by examining registration information on the posted comments. The Plain Dealer allows anonymous comments, in order to keep the online conversation “freewheeling.” An outside firm administers the commenting functions.

The Dilemma

While this reminds me of a situation we faced at the community blog I co-manage, Rockville Central, things are different here and it makes the decision faced by the Cleveland editors more difficult. At Rockville Central, where we faced the issue of someone posting comments under multiple aliases, we do not allow anonymous posting so there is no presumption of privacy. And — more to the point —  the person in question was not a public figure, like Saffold, with the authority of a judge.

The Plain Dealer editors had a tough call, and answer a number of tough questions. On the one hand, some of the questions would seem to argue that the Plain Dealer overstepped:

1. Given that anonymous commenting is allowed, is it OK for reporting staff to look at identifying information on blog commenters?
2. Is it OK to divulge such information when it’s discovered, even when it is denied and someone else comes forward? (The newspaper obviously seems to believe that Saffold herself was responsible for the comments).

On the other hand, another question suggest that the Plain Dealer did the right thing:

1. When a public figure who is part of government seemingly engages in wrongdoing, or even when their family is implicated, isn’t this news and shouldn’t it be reported?

Different people might decide this dilemma differently, but you can make a strong argument that both courses of actions are right in their way. It’s a right-vs.-right dilemma.

One outcome of the Plain Dealer situation is that the company administering the comment functions is taking steps to make sure reporters and editorial staff can’t see the identifying information of commenters. This is something that should have been in place already.

While this is a high-profile and high-stakes dilemma, public leaders at all level face dilemmas like this every day and will continue to do so as the social web continues to evolve. More and more, as individual leaders, we are given power over others’ personal information and stories.

Public leaders and the organizations they head need to have policies in place and understand the consequences of what they are doing. Divulging people’s information is not always wrong — but it needs to be done with full awareness of the competing values in play.

Toyota Needs Action On Three Levels

Last night I gave a talk on ethics and leadership and I based a large section of it on a reading of Akio Toyoda’s Wall Street Journal op-ed piece apologizing for [...]]]> My latest article at my blog at the Washington Times Communities, Public Square Today, is now live:

Toyota Needs Action On Three Levels

Last night I gave a talk on ethics and leadership and I based a large section of it on a reading of Akio Toyoda’s Wall Street Journal op-ed piece apologizing for his company’s shortcomings and outlining plans to correct them. Published Tuesday, it is a good example of some of the concerns that face a public leader in trying to craft and lead an organization that not only talks ethics but also acts on its ethics.

'Working on machinery' by Flickr user NIOSH

Set aside, just for the moment, any anger you may feel that an op-ed statement is perhaps too little, too late. There are definitely ways in which some may say his statement falls short, as does the fact that he had to almost be shamed into attending congressional hearings on Toyota’s problems. Instead, let’s take his statement at face value, because, by doing so, we can draw lessons from it.

The story of how Toyota responds (is responding) to its catastrophic problems illustrates the three levels on which leadership must work if an organization is to act ethically. I have written about this before — I call it Heart, Head, and Hands. What I mean by that is intention, policy, and execution.

• Intention: What is my mission and purpose? To what extent is the achievement of my goals more important than how I go about it? (Heart)
• Policy: Are there systems, structures, and practices in place, and are they sufficient? Do they connect logically with my mission? Can they reasonably be expected to result in the fulfillment of my mission? (Head)
• Execution: Am I carrying out my plans, in the way I intend? Am I following my own rules? (Hands)

So many organizations focus on the first two, and ignore the third — but that’s where things go wrong. All too often, when a problem comes to light, the organizational response is to create new policies and procedures. But many, many times the problem is that someone did not follow rules. Often, there’s one slip that gets tolerated, and then magnified over time. A leader needs to keep their eye firmly on all three levels.

Toyoda’s op-ed is remarkable because he admits that it is at the level of execution that things broke down, and he sees execution as the critical component in correcting the problems.

Sure, he points out that Toyota’s heart is in the right place, as he refers to the “Toyota Way.” And in multiple passages, he outlines specific plans about how he will be correcting the safety problems that are coming to light. That is, he’s got his head in order.

But he also talks about the hands. He admits that it wasn’t a matter of having wrong policies — but that Toyota did not execute its own plans properly. “I recognize that we must do better — much better — in responding to safety issues,” he writes. Elsewhere, he admits, “we didn’t listen as carefully as we should — or respond as quickly as we must” to problems. And, “we focused too narrowly on technical issues.”

That’s looking backwards. Looking forward, Toyoda writes:

I pledge that Toyota will set a new standard for transparency and speed of response on safety issues. We also will strive to lead on advanced safety and environmental technologies. And I will continue to personally visit our sales and manufacturing workplaces to reaffirm the Toyota commitment to excellent quality.

Here, too, is a good lesson — a lesson about execution. It takes three things from a leader to really push execution: Commitment to focus on execution over time; Accountability and a willingness to be held responsible for outcomes; and Courage to act on decision. Toyoda’s statements suggest he is thinking about all three factors.

I am not a Toyota owner, but I know many who see the current problems as a blip in an otherwise stellar record. Akio Toyoda’s statements suggest that this can truly be the case — so long as the execution really is there.

MotorShow 2007: Toyota Rav4 by Flickr user Gaspa

Specifically, he said: “My advice is, if anybody owns one of these vehicles, stop driving it, take it to the Toyota [...]]]> Yesterday Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, in response to a question at a congressional hearing, suggested that Toyota owners ought to avoid driving their cars.

MotorShow 2007: Toyota Rav4 by Flickr user Gaspa

Specifically, he said: “My advice is, if anybody owns one of these vehicles, stop driving it, take it to the Toyota dealer because they believe they have the fix for it.”

The result was widespread pandemonium and criticism across the Internet. In a hyper-connected age, the episode raises some good points.

(Note that I am not talking about the new issue regarding the Prius braking system; this particular episode revolved around the accelerator issues for other vehicles.)

Certainly, it’s reasonable advice to tell someone to quit driving their car, too, but did the head of transportation for the nation have to say that? Toyota has a valid argument that this unfairly kicks them while they are already down. Why not, they might respond, just tell folks to go to the dealer, and omit the whole get-it-off-the-road part? In fact, they responded Toyota responded with a straightforward “they are too safe.”

And, LaHood quickly retracted his statement and said it was an “obvious misstatement.” But I think he may be overreacting to his initial overreaction. LaHood faced an honest dilemma: what to say? There is no perfect answer. My colleague Rush Kidder would point out that he faced a right-vs.right ethical dilemma.

On the one hand, LaHood needs to take a measured stance, not provoke pandemonium, and weigh his words carefully. But, on the other hand, as the chief transportation safety officer of the country, LaHood has an equally strong obligation to place safety first and if that means a company is upset then so be it.

The fact that one clause in one sentence bounced around the Internet so quickly adds intensity to the fundamental dilemma that any leader faces when faced with the need to advise citizens on what to do in difficult times.

The Dilemma Of Evaluation

On a smaller scale, yet no less intense sometimes, foundation and nonprofit leaders face similar dilemmas. We live and work in a world where evaluation and impact measurements are the rage. Grant seekers are under pressure to show potential funders that their programs actually do what is hoped and that they have a decent bang for the buck.

Funders, at the same time, are under pressure from their boards and from economic forces to ensure that they are spending their money wisely.

What this means is that the independent sector has become evaluation-happy. And, this places philanthropic leaders at a crossroads. They are learning a great deal about what works — and what does not work. The question is: What to do with negative reports?

On the one hand, it’s important to share information about effectiveness so that people don’t waste their time and money. And, certainly in the case of absolute failures that’s a no-brainer. But most evaluations are more nuanced and it is not entirely clear if an initiative absolutely failed or whether it just didn’t work as well as it could have.

Given that, and on the other hand, what right does a foundation leader have to spread around such ambiguous information, when such evaluations might dissuade other funders from donating and so hurt the organization in question? So there is a strong moral argument behind not sharing evaluation information. But this leaves possibly ineffective initiatives potentially running indefinitely. Because new funders need to start at square one with their own studies.

Resistance to evaluation is as natural an urge as any — who wants to examine their own possible failures? But there is also the broader question about what use is made of evaluation data. There is no simple answer to this, and I am not about to offer one here.

I will suggest that one thing that is needed is for individual leaders to be more willing to face their own fears. It is not a calamity if a charitable effort is not very effective.

Once, some time ago, I was asked to perform a self-evaluation on a fairly large initiative. The results of the study would, in part, determine if our grant would be renewed. It turned out that the evidence suggested our hard work was tilting against too strong a headwind. It’s effectiveness was questionable, especially on the expansive level we were considering.

My report was met with consternation from my organization as well as from our funder. It threw a monkey wrench into things. We recalibrated and ended up doing something different (and arguably more effective, though that too had ambiguous results). Not the end of the world. But — in the moment — all of us involved had a great deal of fear. Our reputations, our livelihoods, our organizations were at stake.

Still, expressing honesty takes a culture that supports it. While easily said, this can be a hard thing in practice.

In The Beginning

Remember films such as Robin Hood or others that depict tax collectors for the landed gentry repeatedly riding into small villages demanding more money? In such films, often the final manifestation of unabashed moral corruption on the part of the landed oligarchy was the [...]]]> Guest article by my friend Allison Addicott:

In The Beginning

Remember films such as Robin Hood or others that depict tax collectors for the landed gentry repeatedly riding into small villages demanding more money? In such films, often the final manifestation of unabashed moral corruption on the part of the landed oligarchy was the torching of dozens of little homes as flocks of extras flee, wailing into the night.

A while back, in mid-September 2008, many in the media observed the slow collapse of the financial networks in terms of “shoe-dropping.” “When will the other shoe drop?” At that point, being overly reactionary to the circumstances rising up around our ankles seemed to be ill-conceived. Now, with so many institutions in the midst of being propped up, set to receive another round of money, the tax payer still does not know, really, what happened to the first round. Other folks who have traditionally received government funds, like non-profits, can testify that government money usually comes with reporting so complicated that it requires a staff just to manage and track the data the receipt of funds requires.

"Alchemy - The Promised Cotton Candy" by Flickr user sflovestory

In this story, the American taxpayer is asked to observe a kind of moral largesse, a selfless humility these past few months. The taxpayer says nothing as his or her hard-earned money is handed out like giant pink puffs of cotton candy to an industry with a 24/7 sweet tooth. Most Americans want to do what is best, to work together, and want to help this new administration, under the direction of President Barack Obama, succeed. The taxpayer has by and large managed this feat even while trying to dog-paddle in the thrashing seas of bad news about the stormy economy. Is this picture changing, though? The high-drama tea bagging by conservatives aside, will centrist and democratic taxpayers continue this stiff-upper lipped silence? Or, are Americans, beginning to find their voice about morality, ethics, and the world of finance?

Morality, High Finance, And The Role Of The Taxpayer

Indeed, as columnist Paul Krugman penned in his April 23, 2009 New York Times column “Reclaiming America’s Soul”, ethics and the voice of the average American seem to be merging into a higher pitched harmony then ever before. Just as Krugman points out the call and the need to find the perpetrators and arbiters of torture in the Bush Administration, so this other shadowy, Bush-era abomination of corporate greed and usury must be displayed to the light. Americans now pay out taxes to support firms that became bloated on corporate greed — that dangled sub-prime mortgages and low-apr credit card-carrots at the average American. As taxpayers we have always been held to a standard of ethics and responsibility in our role as citizens. Somehow, though, we transferred that allegiance of subordination to the world of finance – and we continue to allow financial firms to claim moral authority over our credit “choices.”

"No bonfire is complete without an effigy" by Flickr user Nadya Peek

They claim moral authority simply in the act of stating that they are “too big to fail”…too big for whom? And will someone please define fail? If by fail one means a moral and ethical failure then fail they have – already. For example, firms receiving stimulus and TARP funds still by and large make no accounting for their prior ludicrous usury, but still nary a hint from the divas of finance about where the support funds are going or have gone. Meanwhile, a little guy like Bernie Madoff seems to have been offered up as an easy and symbolic fall-guy — burned in effigy – with the smoke enabling the true criminals to remain calmly obscure and anonymous. Where accountability reigns supreme for us as taxpayers, the Morality-Free Zone Wall Street moves, speaks and acts in an emboldened but hidden language – behind a scrim most taxpayers still cannot read. These firms have failed every test of morality conceivable. Further, the Grand Canyon-size yawn of silence from CEOs echoes into the national discourse – not a twitter of contrition.

The really egregious paradox is that the rhetoric of morality itself – and claiming a national role as systemic high-minded arbiters of morality and personal responsibility has been the very means by which banks have kept Americans puffing on the credit hookahs. Americans could logically claim that buying more and more on credit to improve one’s “credit score” was a wise financial move in the financial world that has come to exist in the past 20 years. In the late 80’s I was shocked to learn from my younger brother, who took a post-college job with a credit firm, that if a person did not have credit cards he or she would actually have “bad” credit. The “Credit Rating” (the financial/secular measure of personhood) is dictated by these very banks, again. We blindly accept the credit rating armband distributed by an authoritarian financial sector that is in fact morally bankrupt. It has become a force that judges but could never survive judgment by the same criteria. We never question that moral game – and it is the worst most pernicious con game Americans – even after the apparent Obama-Enlightenment, continue to observe in a kind of Pavlovian response developed over the past decade.

Homeless Hens Or Visionary Citizens?

But, what if we did not buy that con game any longer? We need to let the scales drop from our eyes once again. Shake the sand out of our brains and ask ourselves exactly what kind of authority over our lives we are giving to institutions that have no moral high-ground at all except that which we now give them as money wrapped in duty and pity….even as these firms continue to be secretive. Am I wrong here? Are we going to continue to be chickens that pay admission to the wolves for entry into the henhouse – only to be raided and obliterated in a few hours?

"Chicken inspection" by Flickr user Smoobs

Financial institutions and other lenders refuse to hold themselves to any level of moral veracity or to align with a sensibility that supports their customers. Just as bad-boy tax collectors for the landed gentry in “B” movies, Wall Street came to call for our tax dollar with one hand while dropping the atom bomb of homelessness on the very people it defrauded and conned. This con game perpetrated in perpetuity by the manor lords on the peasants really does have morality and moral authority at its heart. Americans bought into the use of credit, financial institutions and banks began to see the mass profits that could be generated by continuing to create new and more usurious methods of pulling money out of the wallets of consumers.

Now, financial markets are not my bread and butter. But, I spent a nano-second in law school. And when folks who were supposed to be the good guys were telling the media that there was nothing they could do – CEO contracts “required” they receive bonuses – and those contracts would have to be honored even for firms with prop-up funds. I have to confess, it made me a bit queasy. Call me a neophyte, but one of the first things you learn in the law is that a contract can always be broken. What kind of fools do they think we really are? Frankly, I think they rely on us being our own worst enemies. And, why not?? Being our own worst, uninformed enemies is what enabled the entire first term of Bush’s presidency. But, I rant, and I digress. Perhaps we Americans – under our various hats as taxpayers, as consumers, and as citizens are beginning to envision again that we do have a lot of power. And we by nature are people of ethics and morality as we speak up to the wrongs of torture and the amoral or immoral reign of Wall Street. Will we as Americans claim our financial future as our own by demanding the current administration and the financial institutions do more than just survive? As Americans and as folks of all faiths we should be demanding a say in how our money will be handled in the future.

(c) 2009 Allison Addicott

Allison Addicott writes and does public speaking with the goal of improving communication between people and between cultures. (She blogs at Quill And Wit.) She holds a B.A. from U.C. Berkeley, a Master of Divinity from Pacific School of Religion at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, and earned the Paul Wesley Yinger Award for Preaching in 2003. She did PhD work in Theology and Philosophy of Religion at Drew University in New Jersey, and at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley. She is currently on ordination track in the United Church of Christ, a progressive denomination that seeks social justice and interfaith dialogue. @allisonwrites

Next up by Allison: Ethical Failure and the Codependence of Greed: Consumers and Bankers as Greedy Bedfellows