The Ethical Barometer

P = f(x).  The probability of a safety conscious decision being made is a direct function of budgets and margins. Put them both together in a meeting and budgets will rule.  When all the analyses on BP’s Deepwater Horizon well are done we will find this inherent tension was at the root of the Gulf Coast disaster.  Indeed, we already have evidence of BP’s shortcuts in the critical path and decisions that fell well short of industry standards.  BP was notorious for coming out on the wrong side of the safety/budget conflict.  In Marianne M. Jennings, Case Studies in Business Ethics, 6^th Ed. (2007), BP appeared in a case study used to teach students about the risks of failure to manage the  P = f(x) tension. Continue reading →

I have lived in Arizona since 1976, a choice of residence that finds tongues clicking about me around the country.  Before giving a speech last week, a potential attendee queried the sponsor, Where is she from again? He responded, Arizona.  And the comeback was,Arizona?!  I’m not coming to hear anyone from Arizona speak.

Los Angeles will no longer do business with Arizona.  The NBA is considering yanking the All-Star game.  Highland High School will not let its young students to journey to Sodom and Yuma, aka Arizona, for a tournament.  Even the poor company that produces the Arizona brand of ice tea has been boycotted.  Little matter to the judgmental that the company is located on Long Island, NY.

How fascinating to witness the moral judgment of those who condemned the hypocritical and privacy-violating Puritanical shunning of Hester Prynne.  Long have they invoked Hawthorne on the dangers of moralizing.  Yet, now they stand, pointing, scorning, and boycotting the state of Arizona because, well, the folks in Arizona are scandalous heathens. 

As a refresher for those who have been sleeping since mid-April, wicked Arizona passed a law designed to do something about border traffic that brings a slew of drugs, kidnappers, coyotes (the transporting, not the howling kind), and cruelly abandoned-to-die illegal immigrants to our ranchers and doorsteps. The bill is not anti-immigrant; it is anti-crime.  The bill is a telegram to Washington,DC, STOP, we have a problem – STOP.

Media characterizations of the legislation have brought incorrect conclusions and emotional outbursts, which have led to boycotts.  We Arizonans have been banished from the kingdom, branded with the red “A” of sin.

Such harsh judgments are rarely just.  Arizona has long been a thoughtful state — one that has opened the door for new faces for the national scene, new ways of doing things, and new ideas that are head-turners.  Before passing judgment and boycotting, or vice versa, consider the following:

Arizona is the state that brought all of you the Miranda warnings.  (Note:  the case involved a murderer, not terrorists (not that the terms are not interchangeable, but we risk another boycott if we touch upon terrorists and Miranda warnings). Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436 (1966).

Following up on our criminal justice standards, we also brought you Arizona v. Gant, 129 S.Ct. 1710 (2009), a case that restricted searches of your vehicles when you are stop.  We can be a most anti-law enforcement state when push comes to shove or police officers come to your car.

Arizona gave the nation Barry Goldwater.  In your heart, you came to know he was right.  When he passed away, this Arizona icon who had been ridiculed in his early day was lionized by the nation.

Arizona is the state that gave you your first U.S. Supreme Court judge, Sandra Day O’Connor.

Admittedly, Arizona is the state that brought lawyer advertising to billboards, phone-book covers, and  commercial breaks on  “Little House on the Prairie” reruns.  Bates v. Arizona State Bar, 429 U.S. 813 (1976).

We brought you the McCain in McCain-Feingold. 

We gave you Janet Napolitano, our former governor and your feckless “the system worked” Secretary of Homeland Security.

These last three examples actually would be sufficient moral foundation for a boycott, but I digress.  The list of what Arizona has brought your way is instructive.  Arizona is a bit of a wild card state.  The people are cutting-edge and streaked with independence. You may not agree with everything Arizona has brought your way, but you can trust that a great deal of thought, worry, and process went into our game-changers. A few questions, some discussions, and data requests are in order.  But these boycotts, these scarlet letters are condemnation without the due process of law we here in Arizona have worked so hard to preserve for all of you.  Before you judge and boycott, think more deeply about the state, its citizens, and what was in their hearts when they passed the legislation, not that red letter you have placed on the surface.

The SEC complaint against Goldman is a stunner.  Stunning because Goldman had a 31-year-old flying about as close to the treetops as one can get without crashing.  Or maybe Fabrice Tourre has indeed crashed now.  If the SEC is right, Goldman’s Tourre put together a deal of CDOs with the mortgage pool handpicked by John Paulson, a guy who planned to position himself short on the securities Goldman would sell to its clients.  Needless to say, the SEC complaint shows that Paulson chose dogs.  But Fabrice was savvy enough to have a third party, ACA Management, actually structure the deal.  The funny part is Continue reading →