Welcome to the Nexus of Ethics, Psychology, Morality, Philosophy and Health Care

Welcome to the nexus of ethics, psychology, morality, technology, health care, and philosophy
Showing posts with label Abuse of Power. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Abuse of Power. Show all posts

Tuesday, August 13, 2019

UNRWA Leaders Accused of Sexual Misconduct, Ethics’ Violations

Image result for unrwa logojns.org
Originally published July 29, 2019

An internal ethics report sent to the UN secretary-general in December alleges that the commissioner-general of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) and other officials at the highest levels of the UN agency have committed a series of serious ethics violations, AFP has reported.

According to AFP, Commissioner-General Pierre Krähenbühl and other top officials at the UN agency are being accused of abuses including “sexual misconduct, nepotism, retaliation, discrimination and other abuses of authority, for personal gain, to suppress legitimate dissent, and to otherwise achieve their personal objectives.”

The allegations are currently being probed by UN investigators.

In one instance, Krähenbühl, a married father of three from Switzerland, is accused of having a lover appointed to a newly-created role of senior adviser to the commissioner-general after an “extreme fast-track” process in 2015, which also entitled her to travel with him around the world with top accommodations.

The info is here.

Monday, August 5, 2019

Ethics working group to hash out what kind of company service is off limits

Chris Marquette
www.rollcall.com
Originally published July 22, 2019

A House Ethics Committee working group on Thursday will discuss proposed regulations to govern what kind of roles lawmakers may perform in companies, part of a push to head off the kind of ethical issues that led to the federal indictment of Rep. Chris Collins, who is accused of trading insider information while simultaneously serving as a company board member and public official.

(cut)

House Resolution 6 created a new clause in the Code of Official Conduct — set to take effect Jan. 1, 2020 — that prohibits members, delegates, resident commissioners, officers or employees in the House from serving as an officer or director of any public company.

The clause required the Ethics Committee to develop by Dec. 31 regulations addressing other prohibited service or positions that could lead to conflicts of interest.

The info is here.

Sunday, July 29, 2018

White House Ethics Lawyer Finally Reaches His Breaking Point

And give up all this?
Bess Levin
Vanity Fair
Originally posted July 26, 2018

Here is an excerpt:

Politico reports that Passantino, one of the top lawyers in the White House, has plans to quit the administration by the end of the summer, leaving “a huge hole in the White House’s legal operation.” Despite the blow his loss will represent, it’s unlikely anyone will be able to convince him to stay and take one for the team, given he’s been working in what Passantino allies see as an “impossible” job. To recap: Passantino’s primary charge—the president—has refused to follow precedent and release his tax returns, and has held onto his business assets while in office. His son Eric, who runs said business along with Don Jr., says he gives his dad quarterly financial updates. He’s got a hotel down the road from the White House where foreign governments regularly stay as a way to kiss the ring. Two of his top advisers—his daughter and son-in-law—earned at least $82 million in outside income last year while serving in government. His Cabinet secretaries regularly compete with each other for the title of Most Blatantly Corrupt Trump Official. And Passantino is supposed to be “the clean-up guy” for all of it, a close adviser to the White House joked to Politico, which they can do because they’re not the one with a gig that would make even the most hardened Washington veteran cry.

The info is here.

Sunday, July 1, 2018

What Trump Administration Corruption Lays Bare: Ineffectual Ethics Rules

Eliza Newlin Carney
The American Prospect
Originally published June 28, 2018

Here is an excerpt:

What’s most stunning about Pruitt’s never-ending ethics saga is not the millions in taxpayer dollars he wasted on first-class, military and private travel to exotic locales, on ‘round the clock security details and on over-the-top office furnishings. The real shocker is that federal ethics officials, having amassed an extraordinary paper trail showing that Pruitt violated multiple rules that bar self-dealing, employee retaliation, unauthorized pay raises and more, have been essentially helpless to do anything about it.

And therein lies the root problem exposed by this administration’s utter disregard for ethics norms: Executive Branch ethics laws are alarmingly weak and out of date. For decades, ethics watchdogs have warned Congress that a patchwork of agencies and officers scattered throughout the government lack the resources and authority to really police federal ethics violations. But since past administrations have typically paid a bit more attention to the Office of Government Ethics (OGE), which oversees executive branch ethics programs, the holes in federal oversight have gone largely unnoticed.

But now that we have a president who, along with much of his cabinet, appears entirely impervious to the OGE’s guidelines and warnings, as well as to a torrent of unfavorable news coverage, the system’s shortfalls have become impossible to ignore. In theory, the Justice Department, the Office of White House Counsel, or Congress could fill in the gaps to help check this administration’s abuses. But none of Trump’s Hill allies or administration appointees has shown the slightest inclination to hold him to account.

The information is here.

Monday, March 19, 2018

#MeToo in Medicine: Waiting for the Reckoning

Elizabeth Chuck
NBC News
Originally posted February 21, 2018

Here is an excerpt:

Health care organizations make clear that they do not condone inappropriate behavior. The American Medical Association calls workplace sexual harassment unethical and specifically states in its Code of Medical Ethics that “Sexual relationships between medical supervisors and trainees are not acceptable, even if consensual.”

Westchester Medical Center Health Network, where Jenkins says she was sexually harassed as a resident, maintains that it has never tolerated workplace harassment. In a statement to NBC News, it said that the surgeon in question "has not worked at Westchester Medical Center for years and we have no record of a report."

"Our policies on harassment are strict, clear and presented to all employees consistently," it said.

"Mechanisms have been and continue to be in place to enable confidential reporting and allegations involving staff are investigated swiftly and thoroughly. Disciplinary actions are taken, as appropriate, after internal review," the statement said, adding that Westchester Medical Center's policies were "continuously examined and enhanced" and that reporting sexual harassment was encouraged through its confidential 24-hour hotline.

More than a hotline is needed, said many females in medicine, who want to see an overhaul of their entire profession — with men made aware of what's unacceptable and women looking out for one another and supporting each other.

The article is here.

Wednesday, March 14, 2018

Oxfam scandal is not about morality, but abuse of power

Kerry Boyd Anderson
arabnews.com
Originally posted February 18, 2018

Here is an excerpt:

Two of these problems directly relate to the #metoo movement against sexual harassment and abuse. First, the Oxfam scandal is not about personal sexual immorality. It is about abuse of power and sexual exploitation. When these men entered a war zone or an area that had suffered a massive natural disaster, they were not dealing with women there on equal terms; they were in a position of power and relative wealth, and offered women in desperate circumstances money in exchange for sex. These women were part of the population the aid workers were supposed to be helping, so using them in this way constitutes a clear breach of trust. This is one of the #metoo movement’s key points — this type of behavior is not about personal morality, it is about abuse of power.

Another problem that the scandal highlights is the way that many organizations protect the men who are behaving badly. In the Oxfam case, the focus has been on one man in a leadership position: Roland van Hauwermeiren, who created an enabling environment and participated in the hiring of prostitutes. Van Hauwermeiren previously led a project team for the charity Merlin in Liberia, where a colleague reported that men on the team were hiring local women as prostitutes. After an internal investigation, he resigned. He later led Oxfam’s team in Chad, where similar accusations arose. Despite this, Oxfam put him in charge of a team in Haiti, where the behavior continued. Following an investigation, van Hauwermeiren resigned, but he then went on to work for Action Against Hunger in Bangladesh. 

Friday, September 15, 2017

Trump ethics watchdog moves to allow anonymous gifts to legal defense funds

Darren Samuelsohn
Politico
Originally published September 13, 2017

The U.S. Office of Government Ethics has quietly reversed its own internal policy prohibiting anonymous donations from lobbyists to White House staffers who have legal defense funds.

The little-noticed change could help President Donald Trump’s aides raise the money they need to pay attorneys as the Russia probe expands — but raises the potential for hidden conflicts of interest or other ethics trouble.

“You can picture a whole army of people with business before the government willing to step in here and make [the debt] go away,” said Marilyn Glynn, a former George W. Bush-era acting OGE director who worked in the office for 17 years.

Lawyer fees have long been the source of controversy for presidents under fire. Richard Nixon’s White House took covert steps to pay the Watergate burglars, and a trust set up during Bill Clinton’s first term to deal with Whitewater and other controversies had to return hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations from a controversial Arkansas friend who was later indicted for campaign finance abuses.

At issue for the Trump staffers is a 1993 OGE guidance document that gave a green light to organizers of legal defense funds for government employees to solicit anonymous donations from otherwise prohibited sources — like lobbyists or others with business before the government. That Clinton-era opinion reasoned that if such donors were anonymous, such donations could be legal because the employee “does not know who the paymasters are.”

The article is here.

Thursday, June 1, 2017

There is no liberal right to sex with students

Maya J. Goldenberg, Karen Houle, Monique Deveaux, Karyn L. Freedman, & Patricia Sheridan
The Times Higher Education
Originally posted May 4, 2017

There is a long and distinguished history of conceptualising liberal democracy in terms of basic rights to which, all other things being equal, everyone is entitled. Sexual freedom is rightly counted among these. But should this right apply where one person is in a position of power and authority over the other? Doctors are sanctioned if they have sex with their patients, as are lawyers who sleep with their clients. Should sexual relationships between professors and students in the same department also be off limits?

Neil McArthur thinks not. As Times Higher Education has reported, the associate professor of philosophy at the University of Manitoba, in Canada, recently published a paper criticising the spread of bans on such relationships. But we believe that his argument is flawed.

The article is here.

Tuesday, May 9, 2017

Ethics experts question Kushner relatives pushing White House connections in China

Allan Smith
Business Insider
Originally published May 8, 2017

Ethics experts criticized White House senior adviser Jared Kushner's relatives for using White House connections to enhance a presentation to Chinese investors last weekend.

Members of Kushner's family gave multiple presentations in China detailing an opportunity to "invest $500,000 and immigrate to the United States" through a controversial visa program and promoting ties to Kushner and President Donald Trump, according to media reports.

Richard Painter, who was President George W. Bush's top ethics lawyer from 2005 to 2007 and is now a professor at the University of Minnesota, told Business Insider the presentation was "obviously completely inappropriate."

He added that the Kushner family "ought to be disqualified" from the EB-5 visa program they were promoting. The visa is awarded to foreign investors who invest at least $500,000 in US projects that create at least 10 full-time jobs.

The article is here.

Monday, April 17, 2017

Who Oversees The President's Ethics?

Alina Selyukh and Lucia Maffei
Maine Public
Originally published March 27, 2017

President Trump continues to own hundreds of businesses around the world, and he has staffed his administration with wealthy people who have ties to a complex web of companies. Those financial entanglements have prompted government ethics experts to raise concerns about conflicts of interest.

They are worried that this president is violating the U.S. Constitution's Emoluments Clause, which bars elected officials from benefiting from foreign governments. Also, in various legal filings and lawsuits, they have raised questions about whether the financial interests of the president and his appointees may be influencing public policy.

As NPR and other media outlets continue to cover these concerns and conflicts of interest, a question frequently arises: Who oversees the ethics of the president and other high-ranking officials? Who has the power to investigate or enforce ethics rules and laws?

The answer can be as entangled as the government bureaucracies involved. Of course, the media, whistleblowers and the courts are key elements of the accountability ecosystem. A number of agencies or government bodies also have a hand in holding presidents and appointees accountable on ethics and conflicts of interest. But a few play an outsize role — though only some of them have direct purview over the activities of the president.

Below is a reference sheet.

The article is here.

Wednesday, February 15, 2017

Recent Trump win on China trademark raises ethics questions

Erika Kinetz
Associated Press
Originally published February 14, 2017

Here is an excerpt:

Ethics lawyers say the trademarks present conflicts of interest for Trump and may violate the emoluments clause of the U.S. Constitution, which bars public servants from accepting anything of value from foreign governments unless explicitly approved by Congress.

Countries could use Trump's desire to control his brand to extend — or withhold — favor, especially a nation such as China where the courts and bureaucracy reflect the imperatives of the ruling Communist Party.

"There can be no question that it is a terrible idea for Donald Trump to be accepting the registration of these valuable property rights from China while he's a sitting president of the United States," said Norman Eisen, who served as chief White House ethics lawyer for President Barack Obama. "It's fair to conclude that this is an effort to influence Mr. Trump that is relatively inexpensive for the Chinese, potentially very valuable to him, but it could be very costly for the United States."

The article is here.