Old Gadfly: IM (an American citizen with an inquiring
mind), I have a hunch what you intended by your message to me about club
mentality. I anticipate the analysis
relates to current events. Tell me more.
IM: Let me frame
my position with the banner: “Scrushy-in
the club; and Paterno-out of the club.”
I learned about Richard Scrushy through one of your ethics case study
texts.
AM
(an American seasoned aviator with an inquiring mind): Who’s Scrushy?
IM: Scrushy founded HealthSouth, a very large
chain of hospitals and rehabilitation centers.
From 1987 through 1997, stock prices increased by 31% each year, going
from $1 per share to $31 by 1998.[1] To make a long story short, Scrushy created a
corporate culture that led to “cooking the books” in their reporting to the
Securities and Exchange Commission (i.e., the SEC). Scrushy and 15 other executives were the
first to be indicted by the federal government for violating provisions of the
Sarbanes-Oxley Act. The 15 other
executives were found guilty of a variety of violations. Scrushy was acquitted of all 36 felony
charges.
AM: What accounted for the difference in
convictions?
IM: Two major reasons. First, despite every other co-defendant
claiming to take their direction from Scrushy, Scrushy claimed he had no
knowledge that questionable accounting practices were taking place.
AM: Sounds like a familiar defense given some of
the scandals currently playing out in Washington DC today.
IM: The second reason is that Scrushy went out of
his way to engender his public personality with the people who would populate
the jury for his trial. Here is how Gadfly’s
case study text described it:
Mr. Scrushy joined a church in his hometown just prior to
the trial and made substantial contributions.
The pastors of the church attended the Scrushy trial each day. Leslie Scrushy, Mr. Scrushy’s second wife,
attended the church regularly and often spoke in tongues from the pulpit. Mr. Scrushy’s son had a daily television show
on one of the local television stations that Mr. Scrushy owned. He provided daily coverage of the trial,
complete with interviews of the pastors and others attending the trial. The show enjoyed very high ratings.[2]
Old
Gadfly: IM, if I correctly interpret
what you are saying, public popularity influenced the jury to accept Scrushy’s
ignorance claim.
IM: Yes.
However, Scrushy was later found guilty of political bribery in a civil
case and held
liable by a judge for nearly $2.9 billion. So, in the end there was some justice, but it
does not correct the complicit behavior of the jury in the criminal trial. As we have discussed in previous discussions,
emotions trump reason. In Scrushy’s
case, the evidence that would shape reason could not compete with the
likeability of Scrushy.
AM: Now, we see similar dynamics playing out on a
national level.
Old
Gadfly: OK, I see your argument for the
“Scrushy in club” part of the banner.
Despite the news cycles about Benghazi, the IRS, and the DOJ secret
subpoenas for phone records, Obama still sports a 53%
approval rating. How about
the Paterno out of the club analogy?
IM: Coach Joe
Paterno left this world in infamy.
AM: Let me just
say, before you go further, that I watched the Joe Paterno public execution
with great pain and disappointment. I
will always remember a Reader’s Digest
article I read about Paterno while waiting for some car maintenance. According to the article, Paterno was being
aggressively recruited to be a head coach for a variety of National Football
League teams with potential salaries that were orders of magnitude greater than
what he earned at Penn State. He
consulted the wisest person he had ever known, his wife, about what he should
do. She reminded him of their values,
how much Joe loved coaching, not just about the sport of football, but about
being good citizens, living their lives with purpose grounded in traditional
virtues. Coach Paterno was not motivated
by pay. He was committed to bringing the
best out of his players.
IM: I agree, but
the NCAA leadership, and others such as politicians and the media, chose to
punish Paterno and those who followed him because he did not do enough
regarding assistant coach Jerry Sandusky’s criminal behavior. Former FBI director, Louis Freeh was paid $6.5
million to investigate the Sandusky scandal. The report did more than wound a living legend. According to news sources:
Ten days after the Freeh report was released, Penn State
removed Paterno's statue outside Beaver Stadium. The next day, the NCAA hit
Penn State and Paterno with an unprecedented string of penalties relating to
the scandal: a university fine of $60 million, the vacation of 112 victories
from 1998-2011, a four-year postseason ban, scholarship losses and other
sanctions. The NCAA acknowledged using the Freeh report to mete out penalties
instead of doing its own investigation.[3]
Old
Gadfly: Did Paterno do anything illegal
or violate University policy?
IM: No. When told about Sandusky’s alleged behaviors,
Paterno followed University reporting policy and notified the appropriate
authority within the University’s administrative structure.
AM: Yet, Paterno
was demonized for not going above and beyond University protocol as if to
suggest he was fully aware of the egregiousness of Sandusky’s behavior, thus
condoning it by not doing more.
IM: Yes, and now,
because of Freeh’s rushed, yet generously rewarded report, the nearly five decades
of legacy leadership and mentorship by Joe Paterno has been erased by the
removal of many visible symbols and achievements.
Old
Gadfly: If your logic is correct, then
NCAA leadership imposed punishments upon many who had no connection to
Sandusky’s actions, like the players who were part of the 112 vacated wins,
scholarship opportunities for those who had already been recruited into Penn
State’s program, and countless others.
AM: This is what progressive
social justice is all about. It’s a
win-lose proposition. In this case,
there had to be clear winners and losers.
Because Sandusky was a football coach, this impugned anything related to
football at Penn State. The NCAA
executioners happen to be university presidents, none of whom ever coached let
alone run an athletic program within a university. University presidents are political
administrators. They get hired to build
networks for political and financial influence.
They are like executive directors for nonprofits, hired for the main
purpose of keeping the organization handsomely resourced. Yet, without the millions, perhaps billions
of revenue Paterno generated with his successful football teams, many programs,
including women sports programs, would not have been funded. It will be interesting to see all the
unintended consequences stemming from the NCAA’s ruling.
Old Gadfly: Who
were the winners?
AM: The
politically correct moralists who consider college football a mere
manifestation of capitalism.
Old Gadfly: Do you
think football, because it is a contact sport, also poses some kind of threat?
AM: Of course,
because the sport requires men with chests.
IM: Wait a minute. Is your argument in relation to C.S. Lewis’
observation about “men without chests” in The
Abolition of Man?
AM: Yes.
Those who play or have an interest in following college football refuse
to be “conditioned” by the “conditioners,” who think we all should hold hands
and sing Kumbaya while the conditioners ensure equality when providing for our
personal needs.
Old
Gadfly: I’m pleased to see your
arguments supported by seminal works.
AM: While it was not the easiest book to read, I
see why you wanted me to read John Rawls’ A
Theory of Justice.[4] Based on what we have discussed, proponents
for social justice believe in Rawls’ “veil of ignorance” concept, where
individuals step behind the veil (pardon my aviator candidness), where they
step behind the veil and engage in mutual mental masturbation, emerging from
behind the veil enlightened as to how to tell other people how to live their
lives—ultimately picking winners and losers, rewarding sycophants and punishing
dissenters.[5]
Old
Gadfly: So, we have two analogies—Scrushy
and Paterno—to demonstrate how people are classified as in the club or outside
the club. Based on the analysis, it
looks like Obama and his team are still in the club for all three scandals. If people feel like Obama is giving them what
they need or want, then why would they care if he lies or misleads through
manufactured narratives?
IM: So far, it looks like Obama is following the
Scrushy model.
AM: Eventually, Scrushy was voted out of the club
with a conviction based on indisputable evidence. Here is the evidence under Obama’s watch:
four Americans killed due to terrorism at Benghazi at the peak of the
Presidential campaign; hundreds of dissenting voices were silenced by the IRS
during the last Presidential campaign; and journalists and editors have now
been warned by the DOJ that their sources can be identified and
prosecuted.
Old
Gadfly: Do you remember the Pentagon Papers
scandal?
AM: Absolutely.
Daniel Ellsberg leaked 43 volumes of top secret material to The New York Times. Among a thorough
treatment by the media of the Papers, here is an excerpt from the front
page of the Times years later: “[the Pentagon Papers] demonstrated, among other things,
that the Lyndon Baines Johnson Administration
had systematically lied, not only to the public but also to Congress, about a
subject of transcendent national interest and significance."[6]
IM: As
I recall, the Justice Department secured a federal court injunction to force
the Times to cease any further
publication of Pentagon Papers material.
The case reached the Supreme Court, which ruled on June 30, 1971 in a
6-3 decision that the federal government failed to meet the burden of proof for
its actions. In his opinion, Justice
Black argued: “Only a free and unrestrained press can
effectively expose deception in government.
And paramount among the responsibilities of a free press is the duty to
prevent any part of the government from deceiving the people and sending them
off to distant lands to die of foreign fevers and foreign shot and shell.”
AM: Ironically, the Pentagon Papers was a Defense
Department Study of a period before Nixon.
The study indicted the Johnson administration. But, a combination of events and the effort
to enlighten the American public left Nixon holding the bag. How many times did you hear people lament
about “Nixon’s War”? Nixon had nothing
to do with the lies and deception captured in the Pentagon Papers. But he certainly inherited the security issues
that followed Ellsberg’s leaks and their violation of security laws and
regulations. Johnson escaped any infamy
associated with his own practices of lies and deception.
Old
Gadfly: Do you see any of these dynamics
currently playing out under this Administration?
AM: Absolutely!
As we discussed in our
last conversation, this Administration has mastered Sun Tzu’s concept of
tactical dispositions. This
Administration’s most serious threat is any American political ideology that is
not progressive. This is why
disagreement is not part of its lexicon.
This Administration has pure, unadulterated contempt for views right of
center, especially for those who hold and express them. This is why members of the Administration
have no reservation in accusing Republicans of manufacturing scandals, conspiracy
theories, fishing expeditions, and so forth.
The
AP and IRS scandals are mere smoke screens for the most egregious activities
that have flowed from this Administration.
Yet, the AP and IRS resonate more with the American public. The Administration wants these two scandals
to percolate for as long as possible, which will make Benghazi look more and
more fictional over time and the “speed bump” Obama wants it to be in his
rearview mirror. Obvious questions have
not been asked: Why was the Ambassador
in Benghazi in the first place? The
facility in Benghazi is not a consulate or diplomatic facility. Remember the large caches of weapons that
went missing during the Qaddafi regime change?
Check out the port facility at Benghazi below.
Old Gadfly: What
are you insinuating?
AM: Do you
remember Reagan’s Iran-Contra
scandal? The U.S. was covertly selling
arms to Iran and then providing the funds from those sales to anti-Sandinista
and anti-communist rebels, known as Contras.
The activities were in direct violation of the Boland Amendment. So, was the U.S. involved in transferring any
of these weapons caches to other parties in the region? Further, how did the jihadist terrorist groups
know about the facility? Did they know
the Ambassador would be there? Or, were
they merely focused on the opportunity to take on more resources?
Old
Gadfly: Very interesting AM. I wish we had more time to chase this rabbit
down its hole, but a similar analysis might be argued with Ron Suskind’s The One Percent Doctrine in which he
aggressively pursues a journalistic prosecution of the Bush Administration.[7] I was amazed at all the classified
information Suskind included in his book, yet disappointed in how he distorted
the picture by not aligning his evidence with the broader historical and
geopolitical context. This could have
been deliberate or just the result of too much time behind his club’s veil of
ignorance.
IM: Given the media’s gentle treatment of the three
current scandals, it appears there may be an unholy alliance between a
progressive media and a progressive government.
AM: Jefferson must have anticipated the
possibility of these types of developments when he included the following
passage in the Declaration of Independence:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are
created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable
Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That
to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their
just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of
Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to
alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation
on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall
seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
IM: I must admit: if our conversation is being
recorded, then we will probably be audited.
AM: I’m tempted to stop paying taxes because
California Democratic Congressman Becerra assured me during the IRS hearing
hosted by the House Ways and Means Committee that paying taxes is a voluntary effort
(Becerra’s segment starts at 1:27:56 in the C-Span video). All my life I thought it was mandatory. Perhaps my fears of the IRS involvement in
implementing Obamacare are unfounded.
Old
Gadfly: Perhaps we just need to
demonstrate a club mentality to avoid any scrutiny?
AM: That’s called going along to get along, a
common affliction for Copernican
drones. Ellsberg was no drone. Nor is James
Rosen of Fox News. Let’s see how the
club mentality plays out in his case.
Old
Gadfly: Good analysis and reflection, IM
and AM.
[1] Helyar, J. (2002, July 7). Insatiable King Richard. Fortune, pp. 76, 82.
[2] Jennings, M. M. (2012). Case 4.6, HealthSouth: The Scrushy way. In M. Jennings (Ed.), Business ethics: Case studies
and selected readings (7th ed., pp. 183-192), Mason, OH: South-Western Cengage Learning.
[3] Joe Paterno family releases
report. (2013, February 13). ESPN.com. Retrieved from http://espn.go.com/espn/otl/story/_/id/8930657/joe-paterno-family-report-calls-freeh-report-sandusky-scandal-total-failure
[4] Rawls, J. (1999).
A Theory of Justice. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University
Press.
[5] Ibid, pp. 118-123.
[6] Apple, R. W. (1996, June 23). Pentagon papers. The New
York Times. See also, Lewis, A. (1996, June 7). Abroad at home; “Bare the secrets.” The New
York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/1996/06/07/opinion/abroad-at-home-bare-the-secrets.html?ref=pentagonpapers
[7] Suskind, R. (2006).
The one percent doctrine: Deep inside America’s pursuit of its enemies
since 9/11. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster.
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